


'Night Shift' (November 2020 daily prompt)

by SkyHighDisco



Category: The Grand Tour (TV) RPF, Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: Apes together stronk, Cuteness included, Friendship, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery, No wait wrong movie, Sci-Fi, Surreal, Suspense, Whump, cryptic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:40:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 30
Words: 47,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27324388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyHighDisco/pseuds/SkyHighDisco
Summary: Cryptid/horror/sci-fi-element entries for each day of November 2020
Relationships: Jeremy Clarkson & Richard Hammond & James May
Comments: 105
Kudos: 16





	1. Confinement

**Author's Note:**

> Largely inspired by [Soobiebear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soobiebear/pseuds/Soobiebear) and her balls. Uh... that wasn't the right expression to use, but come on. Writing a prompt a day? Hats down for the effort alone. That was just super, super brave. And I’m very sorry I don't leave impressions on your Whumptober. I haven’t even collected the courage to properly read it. Honestly I'm scared because of the Big Sad that might occur along with a large dose of double depresso. But I promise I'll give it a try. Might draw some inspiration, too!
> 
> Other than that, don’t mind me. Just practicing my creeps. :3

* * *

Never in his whole life had he wondered what it would be like to be trapped and not be able to physically move.

Perhaps he should rephrase that — he never had to face a situation in which he couldn’t express what he has to say. Or scream, in this case.

He knows it wouldn’t help, but humans have basic instincts, too. Add panic to the mix; real, raw, primal panic, and it becomes really difficult to think rationally.

Richard’s movements are restricted to eye-movement and shallow rhythmic breaths he doesn’t even control. It’s all involuntary. Feels like just another form of being trapped.

The poison that did this to him is a toxin squeezed out of the venom glands of a tropical fish. It causes paralysis that has him feel everything that happens, but unable to move a single muscle. Not even his voice box; perhaps the most prominent feature that made up for all that he was withheld.

Now he couldn’t use it to his rescue. Then, those who put him here convinced him it wouldn’t do him any better if he attempted breakdancing underwater. Odd comparison. Odd thing to be told last.

So he stares through the lid of the locked glass coffin, his nose a touch from the glass blurred from his continuous breaths. He stares at the cold brick and moist walls of the basement underneath his garage. Above him, through the thick concrete ceiling meters above, sits his beloved collection of motorcycles. Something that until day before he would brag about giving his life for.

Now it’s an entirely different story. He’d burn them all down to the last one if it meant he could breathe on his own accord again. Breathe fresh, soft, beautiful oxygen.

He wonders if he’d already been reported missing. The effect of the venom, he’d been told, can last up to six hours. Most of which is irrelevant, because — as he’s politely been told — from the moment the lid was on, he had about twenty minutes and that he should be grateful because instinctive screaming and buckling would shorten it down to less than five.

They even comically crossed his arms over his chest. Like images of pharaohs on their sarcophagus. Only those are mind-bugling art engraved in gold. In here, through the glass barrier, is an art of its own — Richard himself. Soon he will become just a static image as well.

They promise him he will feel everything. And not be able to do shite about it.

They are everything but not liars, Richard learned. Already now, he feels his brain complain against a stubborn lack of oxygen. He attempts to shallow out his breaths, take them in sips, hold them in to buy himself time, but he is the slave of his own lungs. Only consistency and inevitability follow.

The stench of a human being, Richard realizes, is a disgusting, terrible thing. It’s incredible how truly revolting creatures we are. Our insides are greedy, constantly disintegrating, and what remains of that garbage has to come out, seeking purity to devour in ravenous gluttony so the process can start again.

Richard’s nose pipes are becoming acidic and sticky and there is more to the bad taste in his mouth. Now his vision is beginning to stretch at the ends and gaining a navy-blue/pink shade; image stretched over concave sheet. His brain is a hive of wasps, oozing tingles down his temples.

As his vision slowly disappears in pixels and colourful dots quicker and quicker, reducing him only to mind panic, he feels saliva escaping the corner of his lips, a lonely reminder of life that was going to go dry after some time. Just like this tear there.

He prayed one last time it isn’t his wife or one of his daughters that find him. If they ever do.


	2. Alien

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whoop-dee-doo, here’s chapter two
> 
> Or, James has a pet in his garage he doesn’t even know about.

“Are you sure it’s irreversible?” Jeremy’s voice crackles over the phone speaker. “You can’t send them a formal letter or a written plea or something?”

“No, that’s what it said, you indolent toothpick. ‘Irreversible’”, groans James, frustratingly punching laptop keys with sore fingertips whilst having his head cocked to the side and shoulder propped up so he could squeeze the phone in between.

“That’s what you get for not reading your e-mails, May.”

“Trust me, if it was a mechanical problem, I would’ve called Hammond, but seeing as it’s formal and I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing…”

“Hmm, and what happened with all the ‘ _don’t try and help_ ’ business?”

“Haven’t you gloated enough?”

“Gloating about you failing is a separate entity. It’s basically a scientific law.”

James sighs, getting a proper hold of the phone and rubbing his forehead with a free hand. “Look, if you don’t start being helpful in two seconds, I’m hanging up and say goodbye to _our_ next contract. I’ve said that before, I’ll have no problem to—”

“Alright, alright. Do you have old copies of former contracts?”

“Ye—”, James cuts himself off for a second to blink the doubt away. “Yes I think they’re down there in my garage, hang on.”

On the other side, Clarkson chokes on something. And since he’s been chewing on something since James had, all sour-faced about lack of options, called him about ten minutes ago and has been gloated upon ever since, James just assumes it’s pickled onions. Heavens knew fat oaf never had enough of those.

“You keep important documents in the garage?”

“I keep everything important in my garage.”

“Including the Fiat Panda?”

“That one’s not mine, it’s—”

“Sarah’s, yes, I know. Try and not knock over too many things while you’re looking, James. It’s dead of night, so I assume she’s asleep.”

“I think you confused me with Hammond, Jezza”, James counters, reaching the garage and flicking the switch to the right of the door he’s just come through.

Nothing happens.

“Oh, cock”, he mutters.

“What?”

“I keep forgetting I have to call the electrician for the garage lights. They haven’t been working for some time, but I usually don’t need them since I work there during the day and keep the door open for natural light.”

“Cheapskate”, cackles Jeremy through the phone. 

“It’s called energy conservation, you mumbling maggot”, replies James, thankful for the short metal railing down the four or five steps to the garage floor to hold on to. “Hold on, I’m putting you on speaker so I can light a torch.”

“Can you open the garage door, then?” Jeremy suggests, still chewing obnoxiously. “So you can have at least a little light from outside.”

“I’ll wake up the whole neighbourhood if I do. That door produces more decibels than a departing plane”, he says, rummaging through the shelf in search of the wanted box. 

Because James is the only thing breaking the dead silence, he doesn’t miss a shuffling sound coming from the other side of the garage he definitely would otherwise.

He turns around casually, expecting to see a piece of cloth or tarp to have fallen from one of the bikes.

Everything is intact. Nothing out of place.

James frowns, pointing the flashlight left and right, finding with it nothing but stillness.

“Do all perfectionists keep their documents in garages?” Jeremy asks, breaking through his trance; his voice booms loudly in contrast to James’ ears tuned for quiet waves and the younger of the two jumps a little. 

“Those of us who have garages, I imagine”, says James, hoping the ape doesn’t notice startlement in his voice.

“So if I were to implode your garage in some way, you would keep official documents in drawer under the desk like normal people?”

“You don’t want to implode my garage unless you want to return to Lisa with a pole stabbed through your eye and exiting through your arse.”

Jeremy’s laughter calms James’ nerves. He doesn’t like cold, he doesn’t like wet, and he doesn’t like dark in particular either, by and large being alone in it. Nobody really does. Nothing good comes out of dark.

Another sound taps him on the shoulder and makes him turn around, scanning the other end of the space.

“Use lube first, if you will”, pleads Jeremy in a vocal quality that told James he had decided he had stuffed enough pickled onions in himself and has put the jar aside. “And it has to be two meters long because that’s the closest you can approach me, May.”

“Hang on a minute”, James says quietly in that rapid way that makes the sentence sound one-worded.

“What?”

“My Alpine is making weird noises.”

“Already? May, you really need to start listening to me and start buying cars of actual quality.”

“It’s not running, you pillock”, chides James with a bemused grin which very quickly falters. “It’s like… someone is fiddling with it. I can hear taps and cracks of metal and plastic.”

“Maybe it’s a rat. God knows you’ve had those.”

“In old house, yes”, James’s tone is dry of banter mood.

Jeremy takes it as such. Mainly because his next suggestion isn’t if he should hang up.

“Grab some pesticide with you. And just so you know if you start screaming when it runs, I’m recording this call so I can send it to everyone in the office.”

James rounds the blue car, but sees nothing. Nothing under it or behind it, or around other cars and bike wheels. Everything is still silent. If it was a rat, it would’ve scattered the moment he came close.

Sounds come back clearer and this time, James’ torch flies to the huge exhaust pipe of the Alpine.

“Seriously?” he mutters.

“What?”

“It’s in the exhaust pipe.”

Jeremy barks another laugh. “You’re kidding! Are you sure?”

“I’m not deaf, Clarkson, I’m not the one who doesn’t know how to adjust the audio in either of our meetings or official interviews and making a complete fool of myself by having people have to repeat themselves twenty ti—”

Jame’s voice cuts off so suddenly that, on his side, Jeremy looks at the screen to check if the clumsy sod accidentally disconnected. The line was still on, so he presses the phone back to his ear. “May. Did you die? Did you finally get a heart attack?”

The other end continues its silence. Primarily because James had just lost his voice. It abandons him the same way this long, thin thing slithers out of the pipe and begins growing. It grows until the part of the snake-like body that is out of the exhaust is thicker than James’ entire head.

Oh, the head; the impossibility that leads the snake body, dorsal spine protruding with odd, precise almost artistically-shaped scales. Spikes, antennae, scales, pincers, hepta-parted maw, all perfectly symmetrical, mouths within mouths within mouths, and a huge gooey-looking blob on top without eyes that he could see, and yet it faced him directly en face.

“May? Maaay. Come on, it’s not funny, I know you’re silently laughing right now. I’m too tired for that.”

James’ jaw is firmly set with teeth gritted so hard it hurts, the light of the phone torch falling on the slowly swaying thing as the rest of its body kept emerging and growing bigger, quietly, soundlessly so, filling the entire back of the garage like the representation of an eastern dragon with no legs. But its head is always still. Always facing James and producing soft chirrs and clicks and mild, unfamiliar noises while it dripped gooey saliva.

James feels a drop of sweat trickle down his temple. Doesn’t dare to wipe it away.

“James? Say something, come on, mate. Or at least hang up.”

The body is now entirely out. And now it’s about five times bigger than James in height, its knot of a body touching the ceiling, twisted from one end of the garage to another faultlessly evading touching any other vehicles or objects.

Head impeccably lined with James, inches from his face.

“Oh, I see. You want me to abandon the core and pride of us Brits and admit that I refuse to hang up until I make sure you’re okay and didn’t just get a heart attack. Come on, James, I’m tired, just say something. You don’t have to say anything, just make some noise.”

It’s a miracle James hadn’t dropped his phone by now. He probably unconsciously concluded Jeremy’s voice is some form of glue to keep his sanity connected to the rest of him. He is shivering, yet pouring gallons of sweat breathing broken and shallow.

“Fine, I can play that game, too”, Jeremy sniffs. And doesn’t talk anymore.

_Nononononononono_

One mouth extends so far it comes shy away from his nose. And it smells of moss and dead leaves and ozone and chlorine, and wet grass, and forest in the autumn. James nearly falls flat down when he realizes it has actually managed to calm down his breathing.

Finally, finally, _finally_ — the creature moves away, retracts its many mouths, closes the flower-shaped maw, folding it in, and slithers past him to the right, its body following and making quiet, scraping noises over the floor.

And finally, he manages a sort of huff/grunt, phone still pointed forward, light all shivery and epileptic. The tangled body still smoothing past him slowly.

“May?”

“I- - h-here- - -“, tires James, but he’s cut off. Every word takes tremendous effort to squeeze out and when it does, it comes in a savage pant.

“What? Mate. Are you alright?” All pique and sulkiness abruptly gone and replaced with genuine, alarmed concern. “Can you breathe? Do you want me to call help?”

The tail, with those architectural protruding scales reaching the length of James’ arm, goes past him and James finally musters the courage to turn around, breathing much louder and laboured, coming out in gasps.

“James. Please. Tell me if you’re alright or not.”

James watches the last few meters of the creature shrink to half a meter, then thirty centimeters, and then ten before the tip finally disappears into a tipped-over cardboard box at the front part of the garage, hidden in shadow.

“James.”

“I… I peed”, he stutters, knees shaking.

And it was true.


	3. Don't Turn Your Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deedle-dee, it’s chapter three

Country roads are alright when they’re dark as long as it doesn’t rain. Living this far out in the country, Jeremy usually took his chance to speed as much as he could during daytime, but night is an entirely different story. Not only could he miss the turn and end up in a ditch with a piece of railing through his throat, but if a deer decides to become suicidal when Jeremy’s fluttering down the road at 60 miles per hour, it might be something sharper than a piece of railing.

So Jeremy forces himself into shifting to a reasonable speed, pushing the pedal down only on brief straight parts if only to have at least a little fun.

Full bladder was ruining it a bit.

Halfway through, Jeremy decides what the heck. He still had half an hour and his prostate is just as wrinkled, old and knackered as the rest of him. So he pulls over on the side of the empty road to take care of the problem. It’s about two a.m. at this point.

This entire area is surrounded by thick woods and unused farming areas and old, empty houses. Sheds, more like it.

Jeremy steps out into the coldness of the night, crosses the road to the opposite side, gentle rumble of engine calming his nerves. On the other side is a steep drop-off into a ditch and on the other side, a cluster of dense trees and bushes like small woods.

As Jeremy’s relieving himself in the darkness stream of thoughts going nowhere in particular, it hits him out of nowhere.

A sudden massive feeling of dread. It’s so big and unexpected that Jeremy chokes and hitches a little, the flow of urine reflexively stopping on its own. Growing up in the country, Jeremy was familiar with the silence and isolation of a desolate countryside. He’d walk around in the dark to be left alone with his thoughts and dreams of distant future, drags of tobacco upping his big ideas. But never in his entire life has he been overwhelmed with such level of fear. It rivaled seeing a burning _Rimac_ upturned at the bottom of the valley and even a more frightening skid of the _Vampire_ where his younger friend had almost lost his head, and the middle friend could have.

Jeremy stuffs himself back into his pants and runs like all hell is at his heels back to the car. He shuts the door and locks all of them, and fumbles with the seatbelt for a second or two before giving up entirely, hands shaking so much he’d had trouble putting the car into reverse. Thank God he left the engine running. Jeremy isn’t sure he would have been able to turn the key.

He jerks into reverse so bad he can hear gears grinding. But all he cares about is getting out of there.

As soon as he comes back onto the road from the shoulder, the headlights of the car shine over the ditch where he was standing no less than a minute ago.

Jeremy’s stomach sinks.

There is something crawling out of the ditch, sneaking on all fours hunkered down like an animal, but the body is unmistakeably human. Jeremy can see it even from here. A skeletal, emaciated human form with the pelvic bone protruding so hard it looked separated from the rest of the thing. It has no hair that Jeremy can see and its body is sickly pale-greyish. The colour of a dying hopeless patient suffocating between hospital walls. It has an oval-shaped bare head with no discernible ears and the mouth is very thin and wide, stretching all the way across the creature’s face following the jawline and upturns slightly when it reaches the space where ears should be so it could crawl behind, making it look like a sealed, permanent smile. The eyes are beady black pinpoints, almost comically small. There was no nose or any other facial features other than the mouth and eyes. Jeremy can’t see feet or hands from tall grass and he later concludes it’s a good thing he didn’t.

As soon as the lights hit it, Jeremy can tell it was in the process of slowly stalking up the ditch to get him when he had his back turned. It slightly retracts now, as if surprised it had been discovered, but Jeremy doesn’t stick around to see what it would do next.

He speeds off so fast that if there _were_ any rozzers on the road at this hour, they could’ve never caught him. Funny how fear makes even driving quicker.

He stares up at the ceiling all night fighting thoughts about what would’ve happened if he had actually waited for his bladder to empty and ignored the feeling. Lisa’s presence by his side is some comfort, though Jeremy is unsure how.

Fear spawns different reactions from person to person. Fear of the unknown is a very mutual phenomenon among all human beings.


	4. Parasite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being in a hospital today turns out to be a bit of a bad time.

Anaesthetic recovery, James May found out, turns Jeremy Clarkson into a version of himself James doesn’t know how to deal with. He is expertly taught into scientific laws and outcomes and predicaments of normal, big-mouthed, jibing, shameless Jeremy. He knows how to handle his antics and, in turn, respond to them, and so far James thinks he’s been doing a good job in preventing the orangutan from ending up in jail.

But this high, half-conscious, slurring, cuddly, reduced-to-a-complete-baby Jeremy? James only hopes nobody they know encounters them in the lobby of the hospital because he can’t have turned redder than he already is.

“Hurts…” whines Jeremy to his right, nudging James' shoulder with his head. “James… hurts…”

Ever since he woke up, Jeremy could barely keep his head upright. James thought it was funny until they were asked to sit in the lobby and wait for test results to free the room for other patients. It’s a semi-busy day in the ER.

James tries to lean away as much as he can seeing as normal Jeremy would never do something like this unless he feels very silly about posing for a photo. He can’t go far since the seat to his left is occupied by an old lady who looked very smug when she spotted what was going on. James decides to avoid eye-contact with her at all cost.

“I know, Jeremy. That’s what you get for having rectal prolapse”, James tells him despite knowing it wasn’t his fault at all, probing at the larger man’s shoulder with his fingertips to try and keep him at bay to no avail.

“Take me home, James. Please”, Jeremy slurs. “Wanna go home.”

“You can’t go home until we get the results, Jezza”, explains James, surprised at how gentle his voice comes out. At this point, he just sighs and gives in, allowing Jeremy to rest his temple against his shoulder, seeing as, as long as nobody sneaks a picture of them, the fat cock will just forget about everything after a good twelve-hour sleep.

Jeremy snuggles comfortably against him. James finds it reasonably easy not to freak at a complete invasion of personal space than he would have nearly two decades ago, and if Jeremy was anything else but high on medication, he would definitely get punched.

A series of shouts diverts James’ attention from the big baby he is in charge of. He sees nurses and doctors gathered around a stretcher occupied by an obese, maybe 500-pound woman moaning and twisting in pain. The medics are exchanging information in their half-Latin language James doesn’t understand as they rush to the OR a little down the hallway, nearly tipping over the stretcher along with its cargo when they turn and barge through the double door.

“Luv James”, Jeremy mumbles thankfully too incoherently for anyone else to hear, nose buried in the crook of James’ neck, tickled by the long, soft strands of hair. He hooks a finger in the crook of James’ elbow, almost completely out of his chair now. “My James.”

“Yes, well, you’ll twist your back all wrong again. And then you’ll find a way to blame me without admitting aloud that you’re pillowing my shoulder”, protests James, debating seriously whether he would mock the man when he sobers up or keep his mouth shut.

“C’mfy”, drawls Jeremy. “Sleepy.”

“You are shameless”, James mutters not half as irritatedly as he intended and gently dabs at an escaped drop of drool dangling from the corner of Jeremy’s lips. “Look at yourself. Disgusting. Come on, I’m not cockering you, hold that. With your hand, like so. There. Good.”

There’s a commotion on the other side in the OR and James’ attention gets snatched that way again. Through the two narrow windows, he sees the staff running around, and muffled shouting is clearly distinct. He thinks he can discern the medics attempting to hold the woman in place, presumably to give her the anaesthetic.

Hopefully she isn’t as clingy as this one right here.

A small vibration rumbles against James’ neck. “Hey, no sleeping”, he flicks Jeremy's curls. “As soon as we get results we are out.”

“Hurts”, Jeremy whines in return, shifting one foot half in the air in discomfort. “Hurts.”

James pats the hand that has fingers hooked to his arm about to answer when commotion escalates into full-on shouting.

Something has taken a different turn inside the OR. It isn’t a professional rush anymore, a rushed, but navigated hurry to rescue the patient’s body parts. This is frantic and chaotic, the expressions are all wrong.

They are acting like the woman is a time bomb.

Some primal instinct tells him screw the test results and get the bloody hell out of there. Now.

“Come on”, he nudges Jeremy’s head with his shoulder. “Come on, get up. We’re going home.”

A noise of complaint comes from Jeremy, but James is already on his feet, minding to hold onto Jeremy’s shoulder so he doesn’t slump over, ignoring the complaints becoming louder.

“Come on, you wanted to go home, we’re going home, up we go, come on.” James stumbles as he pulls at Jeremy’s arm and wouldn’t have managed the manoeuvre had the ape not helped him by supporting some of his own weight. He does, however, lean entirely into James, hiding his face in his neck again as James falters in an attempt to hold them both up.

“Come on, mate, you have to walk. I can’t carry you by myself”, James hurries, wrapping Jeremy’s arm around his shoulders and the other arm he sneaks around his back to keep him upright, even as nearly the entirety of Jeremy’s body is hunched over, facing the floor.

He sees the surgeon’s back and his hands busy, out of sight. The man’s head is rapidly flicking side and front to whatever he was performing, like he was asking what to do next.

Dragging half-unconscious Jeremy down the hospital floor isn’t easy, especially not with all these stares they are getting.

“Hurts”, Jeremy is mumbling, dawdling, and making James’ life harder. “Hurts. Can’t walk.”

“It’ll hurt you worse when I beat you up here and now if you don’t help me here, Jezza, come _on_!” Now he’s hissing through clenched teeth and, near the front entrance, he turns around one last time.

James stares in disbelief as a scalpel pierces the obese woman’s body and a fucking mixture of pus, rotten tissue and fecal matter comes rocketing out of the incision. And keeps on going. He watches in horror as the surgeons and nurses scatter around the room, dry-heaving and screaming instructions in this torrent of utter revulsion. It’s begun to attract other audience in the lobby other than James.

Then it happens. One of the surgeons flails helplessly as the mixture crawls up his legs, wraps around his body and takes him down into the rising level of filth.

James has seen enough. He begins stumbling towards the exit to which they were now the closest, dragging Jeremy after him, exploding gasps and painstaking grunts. He hears the door being slammed open and a woman’s half-scream, half-gurgle — a nurse, he assumes, but doesn’t dare look behind — before sounds of choking on liquid completely muffle her.

Her screams are replaced by others’.

Jeremy almost slips out of his arms, but James wraps both arms around his hips and continues dragging him, hearing the wet glorping and slurping noises becoming more insistent and more screams turning muffled and dying out. Fast.

The stench makes the worst toilets in Bulgaria smell like camomile tea and James fights against the heaves.

He doesn’t look.

He reaches the main entrance door and has to let go of Jeremy with one hand to pull it open; worst half a second for his other hand.

Somehow, by some miracle, Jeremy doesn’t fall out of his arms and James almost throws them both out.

The door falls shut and, arms and back screaming at rough treatment, James drops Jeremy like a sack. Something the older man fails to notice because he’s sleeping in spite of colliding with the hard ground.

James turns back, watching in horror as the gruesome matter begins spreading and climbing across the glass on the other side, covering it entirely in its dark-red-brown-and-black mass. At its end, the thick substance seems to be reaching farther, like a jelly, warped, fucked-up version of thousands of tiny hands.

The pool of this muck just seems to be growing and James doesn’t wait to find out how much longer it will keep going. His phone is in his car.

But… who the hell do you call in this situation?

Shoving the instinctive shout of _Ghostbusters!_ in his head, James takes Jeremy under the armpits and starts dragging him across the asphalt towards the parking lot. He can debate about it while driving as far away from this place as he can.


	5. Eye See You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a question asked by a college friend while we were having lunch in cafeteria: “Imagine how weird it would be if nobody was talking in cafeterias.”

Richard isn’t tired enough not to debate this question with his crew: “Why name the hotel ‘ _Jubilation_ ’?”

The filming in Portugal is going remarkably well so far. Lisbon is beautiful and the shore of the Atlantic ocean very windy. The ocean itself vast and horrifying. The narrow streets are particularly fun for him to squeeze through and he’s snickering all the while about how he’d wish Jeremy were here if only Richard could mock the crap out of him when he gets stuck between the walls.

Since Amazon likes to make bookings at the last minute, they managed to snatch them a place in a reasonably-priced hotel located just outside of the city. Richard and his crew head there after a really fun day, making plans and phone arrangements for next-day adventures already in the cars.

It’s only in the front that Richard looks up and sees the name. Each to their own, was his ultimate conclusion.

The receptionist is a tall, slim fellow who refuses to shake hands, but he’s all smiles and politeness. Maybe a bit too smiles, but that’s okay because Richard is in a good mood.

That all changes when he reaches his room and gets stunned by the contrast in temperature between outside and his given residence. He physically shudders, dropping the sticker-plastered suitcase on the floor with a bang so he could rub his arms. _Strange. But the sun’s right there, so it would’ve done a good job of heating the room up during the day._

He lets it slide for now since they will only be here for three nights and goes to facetime his daughters before catching a spicy dinner with the crew, getting a fair amount of wine in his system and going to bed, aching and tired, but happy.

Strangest dream conjures itself up in his mind. In it, he is in a huge room filled with four- and two-person tables and he is sat at one of them, having a full meal. He stares at his plate, cutting through a fried steak with fork and knife, even as he is aware there is someone else sitting opposite him. However, that isn’t his main attention-snatcher.

Sound of cutlery, ceramic plates, cash-register beeping, clanging of pots and hissing of oil in the kitchen, it was all there. Sounds of human interaction, conversation, laughter and arguments, were not.

Richard looks around and sees only blank faces. Staring lifelessly and melancholically at the food, at each other with dull eye-contact, not fixated on anything. Just existing there, performing motoric movements without particular involvement.

“Wonderful, is it not?” says the voice in front of him. James’ voice. “An illusion of silence inwrought in a barrage of noise.”

For the first time, Richard looks up at him. And jumps.

James grins from across the small table. All teeth, all wrinkles, that hump on his nose, and all hair on his head. But no eyes. Where they are supposed to be, there is nothing but empty cavities, gaping black voids.

Richard swallows.

James’ smile falters. “What? Do I have something between my teeth?” he reaches for the fork and starts picking at his teeth.

“Oh, your teeth are fine”, Richard assures him with a miniature shake of head and a good few blinks, trying not to rub his own eyes. “Just don’t understand why _I’m_ involved. I was having a nice time until _you_ showed up.”

“What’s the matter? I thought you’d enjoy this!” James leans back and spreads his hands, grin back on his face and when did the fork become an egg? “This is the worst party in ten thousand years. The whole cycle renews every time. And if you’re looking for more than that, I’m sorry, this is the best we can do.“

“Is that why you call it ‘ _Jubilation_ ’?”

The sounds and movements stop. Forks being brought up towards accepting mouths, knives stuck in meat, soup dripping from tipped spoons, glasses with juice and water pressed against the lips.

Then, the sound of shuffling fills the room and as one, all heads turn and hundreds of piercing eyes look straight at Richard, unrelenting and unblinking. Wide-eyed, they bore into him insistently and angrily. Richard is looking from one to the other with a racing heart, and they are all the same and they don’t move. He has gazes webbed to him from all directions.

He immediately shivers and looks back at James, not finding the situation better there, either. James is leaned back against the table, wrists resting on the edges, expression of ire twisting his face and eyebrows squeezing the vacant space of his eyes into a livid frown.

“We’ll see…”, he hisses, crushing the raw egg among his fingers; the shell bursts with a crack and orange gooey substance explodes and oozes around May’s fingers, “…about _that_ ”, and it’s a poisonous snap that sends saliva flying.

And Richard wakes up breathless. He sits up, adrenaline-injected, suddenly washed over with a sense of huge threat. The room is still freezing cold, defiant against the middle of the summer outside, and Richard’s nose is numb from it. He squeezes it between a thumb and index finger to restore circulation, simultaneously trying to compose himself. But the feeling wouldn’t go away.

The strangeness of the dream hadn’t completely vanished with its end and Richard despised all the dark furniture. Since his racing mind isn’t hand-in-hand with his eyes, he doesn’t pick up the oddity they detect and store it into the stream of consciousness until he has to blink, breaking the trance.

He freezes.

His gaze is directed straight forward at the bathroom door. And the keyhole under the door handle.

And a wide eye staring him back from the opening.

It takes a few breaths to realize the eye neither blinks, neither leaves, so he is going to have to make a move first, it seems. With stiff limbs, he throws away the covers and decides what the hell, he’s just going to knee the bastard in the fucking chin when he opens the door despite pissing himself in fear.

He _does_ open the door. Quite bravely.

But the other side is empty and dark.

Richard blinks. Already shaking under adrenaline, he looks all around the bathroom and everything is perfectly still and nothing out of place.

Thinking his mind is playing tricks on him or that there was something seriously wrong with that _cozida_ at dinner, he steps back and closes the door, rubbing his tired eyes.

He looks down and literally jumps back.

The eye is still there, now averted so it stares him down even from this angle.

Richard opens and closes door several times. He even tries poking a pen through the keyhole from the inner side. Nothing works. Whatever this is, it’s still there.

Richard Hammond decides right there that he has been having too much of a good time in Portugal to be fucked and grabs his pants and stumbles all over the room trying to put them on in a hurry.

He leans against the closet for balance and almost screams.

There’s another eye in the keyhole. Piercing blue like ice, unlike gentle hazelnut brown of the bathroom. And this time, Richard doesn’t have to open it for proof that nobody is crouching on the other side because the inside is full of narrow shelves.

He snaps his head towards the main door. There’s one right there as well. Unblinking, tenacious and angry. All over the room, the old furniture, the balcony door. Wherever there is a keyhole, it comes with a belonging eye crouching still and glossy, very real and accusing.

Richard yanks the door to his room open knowing there is nobody to avoid there and storms to the door of the assistant director and tries not to look at the keyhole. The tired and confused man answers after maybe five series of urgent knocks. Too slow for Richard.

“We need to leave”, Richard says in a fast whisper.

The assistant probably sees the panic in Richard’s eyes because he is concerned instead of angry when he asks what’s wrong, and before Richard can answer, there are more crew members in the hallway freaking out and talking about naked eyeballs in the doors.

They just gather the necessities and scramble themselves out. The place is completely quiet. No grinning receptionist, no valet, no other guests, or anybody else. They feel eyes staring from everywhere as they make a quick escape without too many questions.

They thankfully find another hotel. Less luxurious, but Richard doesn’t care. It is warm and has those thick, steel security doors. Without keyholes.

The rest of the filming goes just fine.


	6. Garm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Woof, woof, run

It’s three miles down the mountain and Richard is still shaking in the passenger seat of the _Silverado_. Jeremy had already buggered off with a single cheeky wave so James had to drink in all the curses-adorned ranting from the tiniest creature on the planet. It doesn’t even stop when Richard finally sits on the passenger seat with a paper mug of steaming tea. It’s not filled to the brim, thankfully, because the man is shaking like his nipples are attached to jumper cables.

James only patiently nods through all of it, knowing the storm will subdue when Richard tires out.

True to May’s guess, Richard eventually falls into quiet mumbling and finally to sulky silence, settling to warming his fingers against the cup and relax under the car heaters while being tumbled down the unstable snowy paths.

James eyes him sideways and reaches to check if the heaters are at full blast, even as he is close to sweating in his jumper.

“There’s more tea in my thermos”, he offers mildly.

“Thankyouno”, declines Richard taking a shaky sip of the beverage sloshing at the bottom.

“You’ll be fine. When we get to the hotel, we’ll roll you in the carpet in front of the fire and leave you there.”

“I’ll need a lot more than carpet and the fire”, says Richard, taking another shivery sip. “A bloody hell-shower is what I’ll have.”

“Do you want room service?” teases James.

“Shut up, James, you’d die up there, you hear me? Die. You wouldn’t be able to stand that, your precious cock would frostbite and fall off.”

“Why do you think we sent _you_?” chuckles James, still grinning bemusedly. “You’re like a marble; small but indestructible. If you were a car you’d definitely be the Hilux. But a matchbox version.”

“James, I’ll stuff your pillow with nails.”

“Relax. Look, there’s a moose right there. He’s coming to brighten your grumpy day.”

Richard looks up, sulkiness still in eyes, but he leans forward anyway when James slowly brings a car to a quiet stop in the snow.

Indeed. Maybe thirty meters ahead, there was a large herbivore quadruped, painstakingly penetrating through the thick white duvet. Richard has always been amazed by the size of those animals so he is befuddled as to why it is moving so difficultly. The snow level on Wolf Mountain, while representing Richard a problem, should be nothing worse for a moose than a gentle stroll through thin grass for a human.

Then it comes out onto the path and they see why it’s stumbling, leaving a trail of irregular red patterns behind.

“Is it… bleeding?” mutters James in disbelief.

“Look”, points Richard into the thicket where the animal has come from. There was more movement.

What both of them see, none can explain.

Something is coming up the slight slope onto the path, and at first it’s a wolf. Then it disappears behind a tree. What comes out is not a wolf. It’s a skinny, medium-sized dog, maybe a basenji. Which disappears behind another tree. Out comes a saluki, then a newfoundland, then a bull terrier, then one of those Japanese dogs, then a Pomeranian and then a Caucasian shepherd. 

What comes from behind a final tree is nothing Richard or James have ever seen.

At first they think it’s a bear, but it’s twice the size of the moose that is now squirming pathetically in the middle of the path, not able to stand on its feet and bleeding profusely from a deep, curved gash on its back.

This beast walks calmly out into the open. Wherever it puts its paws, the snow melts and the frozen ground beneath it rots and decays, sizzling and turning black. It has a strong, muscular body and large legs wrapped in thick, rusty chains that hang and sway as the animal moves. The fur is dirty and greasy and missing at places with literal thick branches sprouting out of its back and around the shoulders, largest of which are probably taller than James. It has a strange, black/sickly-green colour. Like it’s rotting away.

The head of a dog is missing flesh at places, revealing off-white bone and one gaping orbit. The remaining eye is brimstone yellow and the snarl on its face is a twist of pure hunger and malice. Aside from the chains wrapped around the neck, there is a lose worn-out rope, like an impromptu collar.

The huge creature walks to the downed, now braying, panicking prey and it takes its time, saliva breaking through the teeth-armed jaw profusely, foaming at the edges of the lips. When it reaches the moose, it spreads its mouth and the lower jaw, in turn, splits in two at the bottom, widening its range even more. Huge, long teeth plunge deeply into the flesh and rip a large chunk away. Blood comes rushing out in unfaltering streams.

“James?” whispers Richard.

“Yeah”, replies James, equally silently.

“Get in reverse and I go back, I can’t believe I’m saying this, very, very slowly.”

“Yep.”

James does as he’s told, hoping the sound of wind and creature feasting will muffle the sound of the engine.

The creature never spots them as much as they can say, but Jeremy’s jaw-slacken face of disbelief is amusing as hell to watch when, driving like all devils are chasing them, they reach the hotel before him.


	7. Synesthetic Compatibility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seemingly normal day in the office, boys experience a strange happening. (Top Gear days)

“Do my fingers smell like pyrotechnic?” asks James, sniffing at the back of his curled fingers.

Jeremy’s fingers stop mid shuffling papers, eyes flying up over the ridge of the computer screen to find Richard sitting on the other side. It’s a casual day, which, compared to the everyday tempo of the office, is almost boring — but maybe not _that_ casual. It’s still morning, though, there is time for things to get hectic.

But then James extends his hand over his desk perpendicular to Jeremy’s. It has the older man instinctively flinch back in his chair, pulling a half-face of disgust. Any other time he might appreciate the shift in tides of James May’s natural touch shyness, but this morning’s coffee had been bad.

James briefly rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to slap you, Clarkson. That’s girly.”

“Justifiable for you, then”, snorts Jeremy, but leans back in and does as he’s offered with a small squint.

He inches back slowly and makes a firm eye-contact with James. Two pairs of blue eyes are basically identical.

“Hammond”, Jeremy calls over the monitor in an urgent whisper of a little kid that has a secret to share. “Hammond, smell his fingers. He really _does_ smell like firecrackers.”

Richard pulls the same expression Jeremy had previously, but at Jeremy’s insistency that was becoming a bit too loud and threatening to attract attention and James May actually offering physical contact instead of finding ways to dodge it, Richard relents fairly quickly, leaning over.

And his eyes go rounder than they already are and he tips himself back over his desk to prod James’ knuckles with his nose, sniffing vehemently at the scent his receptors gathered, but his brain stubbornly re-reading the information.

“Alright, Hamster, don’t eat my hand”, James pulls his hand back lest he loses it, shaking it out like Richard might’ve left some unholy germs.

“What have you been doing on your way here? Blowing up tin cans?” Richard asks.

James convinces them that no, he wasn’t even close to any pyrotechnic. He doesn’t even like them, which the other two can attest to. 

However, when they call Andy over, he only frowns in confusion, shakes his head and tells them unbusy morning isn’t an excuse to make stuff up and waste everybody’s time. They are confused when he departs, grouchy for whatever gloomy thoughts wrecked the rest of his day or days that follow. The three men do another sniffing exchange of both of James’ hands, not heeding curious looks from around the office they are now getting. There was no mistake. The scent of black powder mixed with sulphur is lingering there clear as day.

And it’s just a start. Half an hour before the show is going to start, they are in their portcabin, revising the lines, drinking tea and warming up by taking a piss out of each other. They all shut up simultaneously when it hits them — a distinct scent of a woman’s perfume. They all pause, taking brief, quiet intakes of air and stare at each other, knowing it can’t be a coincidence. All three of them felt it. But maybe five seconds later and it’s completely gone like it’s never been there. They walk from one end of the portcabin to the other, but there are only tea and faint leftovers of coffee and tobacco.

In the middle of the news, it happens again.

Jeremy and Richard have only been exposed to that particular scent once or twice in their lives, but James is all too familiar with it — the smell of old theatres, soft velour and creaky old wooden chairs and even creakier and older wood of the stage adorned by huge curtains.

They know not to let it show and cover it up brilliantly with lame jokes about signposts and ministers of this and that — with a glance-exchange so subtle even the most eagle-eyed viewers might miss it happened; developed from years of unplanned practice.

There’s a statement in that brisk visual triangle.

_This is not a coincidence._

During the guest section, Jeremy is enthusiastic and lively, and so is the pair of visitors, treading through vivacious discussions and more or less suitable topics. It’s a little bit more fun than it usually is and the crowd loves it. Richard and James witnessing it all happily from somewhere among people.

Then it hits them like a bat. This one much stronger than the previous ones. The scent of burning tire. Mind-muffling and cruel. Richard and James flinch and Richard clamps his hand over his mouth to suppress the gag reflex. They turn around, observing the still smiling and laughing faces pointed at the stage.

There’s another mute, perhaps more prominent observation now. Nobody else feels this. It’s literally only the three of them, despite Jeremy being meters away, cut away from them by dozens of people.

It keeps happening. All throughout the show and afterwards. Ozone, bananas despite them being outside and no one in the vicinity eating one, shower gel, hair spray, and not it’s not Richard, wet dog when there is no dog, new furniture, fresh paper, bleach, moist ink, tomato sauce — all when they are near none of those things.

At some point Jeremy wildly yawns and gets an unmistakable taste of fish fingers on his tongue. He finds the other two with his eyes. Yup. Definitely fish fingers.

While James is driving home in late afternoon, tired and a little confused, he sneezes and there it is. A dumpster behind a supermarket. That horrible, worst smell in the world. He automatically makes a face and sways a hand before his face. The next second it’s gone. Every next olfactory assault seemed to be stronger and, in step, last shorter.

James still texts their group chat at the first red light.

_M: Rotten garbage_

_C: Yeah_

_H: Did you sneeze as well?_

A chill curves down James’ back.

_M: Yeah, mate_

_C: Bloody hell_

The next day, everything is normal. James’ fingers don’t smell of powder anymore. And nothing similar ever happens again. But the trio still talk about it every now and then, when there’s just the three of them.


	8. Gluttony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeremy transforms into something worse than himself.

Jeremy doesn’t know when it started because it escalated like tide; very slowly and very parasitically unnoticed.

It might have started with him loudly munching on snacks in the office annoying the hell out of everyone in the room. Or when he marvelled at the well-done steak after a long exhausting day of production and living the entirety of it on a single fag. Anything could have triggered whatever it was.

Jeremy only wants to know why. What had he done wrong?

He only knows that at some point, he started to order chips along with beer in the pub after the filming. Then it turned into a sandwich. And then into a full-blown meal. He’s getting odd looks from the other two, but he convinces them that lack of proper dinner makes you stupid and slow.

“You guzzler”, Richard grins at him, sipping on his gin. “You’ll turn fatter than you already are.”

Richard had no idea how wrong he would be by saying it. And not in a good way.

Through the following weeks, the span between Jeremy’s morning breakfast consisting of eggs, bread and bacon and his destination at Drivetribe offices will shrink in time regarding the newly rising wave of hunger. Only a banana between breakfast and lunch is too small to satisfy his increasingly complaining stomach.

Jeremy becomes worried. It comes in step with his lack of quips and spamming Twitter. People notice. Unfortunately, so do James and Richard.

He tries to convince them everything is alright, but in terms of pretence and trying to keep secrets, that medal belongs to James. James, whose squint says he doesn’t believe a word. But he doesn’t press, and Jeremy wishes he could sit them both down and tell them everything because he’s slowly starting to turn from worried to scared shitless. But what does he tell them? 'Chaps, I think my stomach's increasing in size because I can't seem to be able to fill it up'?

He smokes at every available moment, but it does absolutely nothing. He tries so for a week.

Fags soon become useless in an attempt to distract him from caving hunger. He stops buying them because they stop being important.

Jeremy visits a doctor. They make an x-ray and run several tests. Everything seems to be in order, nothing out of place. “But easy on the beer, Mr. Clarkson.”

That’s definitely not the biggest problem right now.

At this point, he has the need to eat every fifteen minutes. When he doesn’t, his head and stomach are empty and demanding attention and his vision is half red with inability to focus on anything else.

It doesn’t just change his stomach. It changes all of him.

He’s sitting there, typing on the laptop, gritting his teeth and trying to ignore the compressing pain squeezing his stomach and making him want to curl in and disappear into himself. Focusing on breathing helps only a little. His stomach seems to have more air that he cannot burp out. It feels his head is equally empty and he honestly doesn’t even know what he’s typing.

Richard chooses the moment of particular pain sequence to walk in, having wormed his way up from the Chimp offices.

“Hey. I know those whiteboards I borrowed from you have been down there for a while, but do you think I could hold onto them for a while longer? I’ve really got no place to put post-it-notes anymore.”

“Sure”, Jeremy responds briskly through gritted teeth.

The sharpness of the response combined with a lack of creative derision throws Richard aback a little. “You sure? I mean, I could always ask someone else.”

“I said it’s fine”, Jeremy brushes him off rather sharply. Richard rummages through his head trying to think what he had done to make Jeremy this cold and bitter.

“Jezza”, the smaller man steps into the room, mild concern twisting his brow. “Are you alright?”

“Is that all you’ve come to say, Hammond?” Jeremy’s voice grows in volume and irritability.

“Why are you so angry with me?”

“Well, if I am, it’s your fault!” Jeremy barks, turning halfway livid out of his mind and making Richard jump. His pupils are eerily small and the look in his eyes feral.

For the briefest of seconds, Richard is scared for his life. But then the cheeky, stubborn composure defiantly pushes back.

“Fine then, you big teenage girl. Go buy some tampons, why don’t you. Heard chocolate helps with that sort of thing as well.”

_No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t, Richard. Please, help me, please I have no idea what to do I have no idea what’s happening and I have no idea how to stop it please please please I’m sorry_

But Richard is already out, shutting the door behind him with a little bit more force than necessary and Jeremy dips his face into his palms, letting silent sobs shake his shoulders.

His stomach twists even worse than it already has been.

Weeks go by. Jeremy’s control is steadily losing its grip. His suffering becomes complicated.

Food just about loses its taste. Now he eats out of pure need. His stomach becomes a volcano and his gullet its throat. Stomach acid is pooling into his mouth, burning him if he doesn’t eat for ten minutes and driving him mad.

He never gains any weight. Everything he eats simply disappears.

One morning, after a long, insomniac night without sleep, Jeremy walks down to the fridge and grabs the egg crate, heating the oil in the pan and waiting for it to warm up.

Half-shaking there, hovering a hand above the pan to check for the heat, it just happens. He cracks an egg, lifts it above his mouth and cracks it open inside, raw. He repeats the process five more times and when there are no more eggs left, the oil finally begins to simmer.

He not only throws up. He shits diarrhea for three days afterwards. It only makes the insatiability worse.

James walks into his Drivetribe kitchen only to discover it completely rampaged. Everything, every piece of food on the shelf and from the fridge is gone. He absolutely flips out on just about anybody who has been a regular visitor and accusations and warm-hearted relations are dangerously close to tipping over. It calms down a little when Lucy convinces him food items at least aren't difficult to replace.

Jeremy wasn’t on that list.

Jeremy still refuses to look James in the eye.

It’s also the last time he’s in the offices.

He successfully keeps it from Lisa until one morning she finds him curled next to the open fridge, completely emptied. Open cabinets and the pantry as well. Gnawing furiously onto a metal lid of a pickled pepper jar.

She starts screaming something Jeremy doesn’t really hear. Hungry, hungry, hungry. 

She manages to take him to a doctor. Again, nothing weird, just a bit stirred stomach acid. He gets pills for it.

They don’t help at all. Melt in acid like everything else.

Lisa simply leaves the day Jeremy eats a whole live chicken from its pen. Jeremy barely notices. Doesn’t remember the expression on her face.

His salivary glands go nuts; he’s drooling gallons a day along with bitter, biting acid. He managed to eat half a cow. Raw. Still shitted liquid. But his stomach doesn’t ask.

When he’s satiated for the briefest minutes, his head is a little clearer and he just barely becomes aware of what he had done. Then he sits in the pool of blood he’s created, gnawing on his finger until it bleeds itself and silently crying, only briefly remembering other people; Lisa, his kids, Richard, James…

But then everything gets swallowed in the cloud of another wave of mad hunger.

When Jeremy’s eaten all animals on his farm, he leaves. He’s stopped going to the store long ago, sopped bathing, stopped shaving, stopped caring about anything other than the desperate need. There was nothing, no one, not even him. Only the next eatable thing.

At first, he steals from the market. Fruits, vegetables, dairy, and — his favourite — meat. When he is discovered due to his carelessness, he is shoed away by both sellers and the police.

He ends up out of London and out of the region. He wanders down south, through towns, cities and villages. Begging takes too long, so he doesn’t do it. He steals when he has a chance and moves around during the night to avoid being seen. He’s getting very methodical and skilled about capturing stray cats and dogs.

Then, one evening, panting and exhausted, with growling sounds coming through his mouth from the bottom of his stomach, Jeremy hears voices and instinctively ducks low.

He peeks around the corner to spot a group of three kids. It’s about eleven in the evening at this point, and they look to be around twelve years old. A group of rebels, lingering outside past curfew.

They are exchanging something between themselves and Jeremy forces himself to crouch and wait, observing the situation and trying his best to ignore insistent growls coming from inside him.

Then the two kids soon part, waving and mounting their bikes, talking about seeing each other tomorrow and skipping class and making that fatso on year six lay in nettle bush tomorrow and how it’ll be wicked.

The one kid eventually stays alone, shuffling with something in his hands with his back turned, completely unaware of his surroundings. The alley is small, narrow and empty, the back of the abandoned building. Jeremy straightens up halfway and silently makes his way towards the boy. 

He makes one final attempt to stop himself. To take over control. There’s still chance to have his life back. There is still chance to stop this insanity. It’s a child, for heaven’s sake! If he does that, there is no more going back. Ever.

But final desperate traces of himself disappear in the background of a dizzying fog and his pupils dilate with approaching desire; saliva pours down his chin, dangling off it in a thick droplet as he fixates on the kid’s back. He only just about notices how stealthily quiet he is as he’s stalking up the unexpected spoil before everything fades out of consciousness.


	9. Painting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a real-life painting called ‘Anguished Man’ and Christ on a bike… I scared myself writing this.

“Uncle James, Uncle Jeremy!” squeals Izzy, throwing herself at the younger man. With her every crushing embrace, James’ ribs creak in a whole new way he’s never known they could. Another proof how she’s getting older and older and there is nothing to stop it.

“If I ever get murdered, I know who it will be and how”, James returns the bear hug with one free hand that isn’t occupied with a small suitcase, helpless against a smile.

“Just admit that a twenty-year-old girl is stronger than you”, Jeremy tells him, squeezing Willow to his side who didn’t take long to catch up with her sister.

“Go on, finish him off”, James gestures at Jeremy with his head and the sisters switch places, Jeremy pretending to choke when Izzy hugs the living daylights out of him and then having to bend ridiculously low to kiss the top of her head to wish her a happy birthday.

“Come on!” yaps Willow excitedly, pulling the suitcase out of James’ hand, already knowing where to take it. “Iz and I cooked today. Daddy wanted to help, but we wouldn’t let him into the kitchen.”

“Good girls”, nods Jeremy, capturing James’ glance with a wicked smile.

They greet Mindy and Richard in the kitchen and the girls disappear upstairs to carry the luggage, vigorously chatting the entire while.

“James, how is Sarah?” Mindy greets with a dazzling smile, accepting a hug.

“Excellent. She’s holding a ballet seminar in Warsaw. Says kids are fantastic. But she sends her love and regrets she couldn’t join us.”

“Should’ve taken you with her”, mumbles Richard.

“What’s the matter, Rich? Hoped for a peaceful weekend but hands are tied?”

“Jeremy, if my daughters didn’t love you two for to me completely unexplainable reason, you would be as far away from this place as possible.”

When the girls stomp back downstairs, they make them all sit down and then Izzy and Willow take turns to poetically explain what is being served to the utmost amusement of the pair of guests and their parents.

After a delicious home-made soup born out of the recipe of Mindy’s mother, and the colourful variety of the main and side dishes and the salads that follow, out comes the creamy cake with two candles creating number 20 protruding out of the middle, main fixation of Izzy’s blushing stare when the others sing to her.

“Oh, Uncle James, Uncle Jeremy, wanna see something cool?” she booms abruptly after a while of them gorging into brilliant desert, almost bouncing in her chair.

“Wait for them to finish, for crying out loud”, chides Richard, overly fondly.

“I did mean after they are finished.”

“One second”, Jeremy lifts a finger and stuffs a huge piece of cake that was left on the plate, making his cheeks puff and his lips barely able to close around the huge chunk. The sisters laugh in approval when he points at the plate and lifts a thumb. As he’s wiping his mouth with a napkin, he gives Mindy a half-smug, half-apologetic look to which she subtly winks while Richard and James are left palming their faces in embarrassment. And then he is being dragged away by a pair of eager hands. 

“What a cockface”, mumbles James with a gentle head-shake, enjoying the desert fully.

Moments later from the hallway, Jeremy produces a loud closed-mouthed sound that could visually be interpreted as an amplitude of the wave going down and then abruptly up which makes it sound just like James’ name and is perfectly clear to the said man who rolls his eyes.

“What?”

The next set of Jeremy’s bumbling isn’t as identifiable, but it makes the girls giggle madly from the hallway.

James finishes himself — civilly — taps a napkin to his lips and gets up with a polite ‘’scuse me’ and following to where Jeremy had left. He hears the remaining two stand up and then Richard chivalrously offering to clear the table in a low voice.

In the hallway, still chewing, Jeremy is pointing to the wall.

It’s a painting. James has paintings at home. Few of them. But neither has made him jump at the first look.

The background appeared to have been done in a hurry and frustration, like the artist simply didn’t want to bother with it. It was a mush of black, grey and dark blue colours, done in rough, visible lines, like the brush has been repeatedly thrown at the canvas in a game of darts. But that was the background. In contrast, the centre of attention has been very, very dedicated to.

It was a woman figure, James supposed, with a very distorted, wry and twisted body like a human flag in the wind. She’s dressed in a simple one piece of cloth, maybe a dully-grey-blue gown.

But the head is what is so detailed and striking in the eye of the beholder that it looks like it’s about to pierce the barrier of the canvas any second. It’s too big for the body, oddly shaped, elongated, with protruding cheekbones and long chin. The toothless mouth, which is just a black gap, is smiling widely, but the cheeks are pressed inwards, like there are two invisible fists pushing them in; a face dad makes when attempting to make his baby laugh. The pale face is framed with shoulder-length, thin dark grey hair.

And then the eyes, the very reason why James already wanted to burn the thing. Huge round orbs with owl-like big pupils, each looking its own way, and yet simultaneously looking straight at James. The arms are oddly positioned. Lifted at the sides, fists pointing forward, like she is dancing.

“What do you think?” Izzy asks with enthusiasm James didn’t understand.

“Well… it’s, umm” _Hideous. Disgusting. Terrifying. Horrid. Revolting. Get it out of my sight. How can you have that hanging on your wall? In your house? Where people can see it?_ “Interesting.” He gives Mindy, who had joined them, a questioning, mildly concerned look.

Mindy rolls her eyes. “Don’t ask. She saw it on garden sale and of all possible things she could buy, she buys that. But she had aced mid-terms so we promised her an award. She tells us there’s a practical use and that, should we ever get visitors but not actually want them there, it should be enough to creep them out to leave.”

“I suggested jar tricks years before, but you wouldn’t let me”, says Izzy, popping around James’ arm.

“No”, Mindy says, cold as cucumber. 

“Jar tricks?” James is looking between mother and daughter, not understanding.

“Jar tricks”, explains Willow. “You print out a picture of a face, smear it with wax and get a little bigger jar, pickles or onions for example, and you add water and a little bit of green or yellow gel, mix it up and add the picture inside.”

“And then it looks like you have a severed head in your fridge”, finishes Izzy, beaming. “You make the guests uncomfortable and they leave without you having to shoe them out.”

“We didn’t make you uncomfortable, did we, Uncle James?” Willow asks him, looking genuinely worried for a moment, the darling thing.

“Why would you?”

“Wire”, says Jeremy.

“I’m not a liar”, protests James through another round of surrounding juvenile giggles. “But I would’ve preferred the shoe”, he admits, meeting Mindy’s sympathetic smile.

* * *

The girls go to sleep earlier—around eleven. Or, at least, they’re just in pajamas. They bid their parents good night, and to Jeremy and James. Hugs and kisses goodnight are difficult to keep hold of when your children grow up. Richard had somehow managed, the lucky bastard, Jeremy thinks while delivering a kiss to Izzy’s cheek and sending her off with a light pat on the back, being strangled in a hug by Willow not a second later. He wonders when was the last time any of his kids allowed him to do that.

The adults talk until about midnight, then Mindy leaves and the three men end up chatting until one in the morning, soft wine soothing their nerves and because they aren’t thirty anymore, James announces he’s off first.

By half-past one, the mini-castle is dark and silent.

Around half-past three, according to the bedside clock in the guest room, James might’ve been woken up by something specific, but since he was still trapped in a groggy after-REM state, he couldn’t be sure.

He also realizes, with deep annoyance, that his bladder is pressing against his prostate and that he’s simultaneously thirsty. No worse combination of uneven body liquid disposal.

James gets up and quietly tip-toes down the hall to relieve himself. Then he slowly descends down the stairs, using the railing to guide him and avoiding turning on any lights since long windows and patio doors provide just enough light for him to be able to navigate around. He also doesn’t want to confuse his half-asleep brain still pleasantly stoned on melatonin.

He goes to the kitchen, a bit clumsily opens the cabinet door and concentrates as hard as he can to not be as clumsy with getting a glass. The hum of water through the pipes and into the glass is loud in contrast to the silence, but not unpleasant.

James inhales deeply after gulping it down and is, once again, interrupted by soft noise coming from the other part of downstairs. He comes from the kitchen and onto the T-junction of the hallways. Left leads towards the stairs and right towards the lounge room and another hallway that leads to the backyard. In the middle of it sits Sparrow, Richard’s black labrador. Staring insistently down the lounge room hallway, ears perked and completely intense.

James walks to her and softly clicks his tongue while scratching behind her ears. She whines as she looks up at him, and then focuses back on the hallway.

“What’s the matter?” he whispers, seeing nothing himself.

The dog growls deeply and throatily in such a ‘fuck-off’ way that James retracts his hand, looking down to see if he’s accidentally stepped on her tail.

He hasn’t. He is definitely not the problem.

Sparrow tips her head back again, whining and nudging her head under his palm, almost pleadingly.

“I’m not taking you outside”, James says gently, giving her head another stroke before going back towards the hallway.

He passes half of it, almost reaching the stairs.

Stops.

Doesn’t realize why.

Until all melatonin draws back like the sea before tsunami and it registers.

He takes two steps backwards and looks at the wall.

The dark canvas of the painting seems even darker in the night. Like all palettes have acquired one more layer of black, the strokes of paint still rough, annoyed, violent and bitter.

But that’s all there is. The background.

There is no figure.

James takes two, three, four profound blinks and wipes at his eyes one by one before looking again.

Still empty. The catastrophically horrid interpretation of a feminine figure just isn’t there anymore.

Another cluster of thumps and noises accompanied by a dog’s growl make him look back.

Sparrow releases a belly ‘boof’ kind of bark, then jerks to her feet so suddenly she maniacally skids the clawed paws on the wooden floor, giving James a heart attack, and half-runs, half-slides towards the kitchen where James had come from, tail tucked under the rapid feet.

James looks at the empty spot where she had been in bewilderment before the thumping, coming from down the hall from the direction of the lounge room comes back accompanied by new set of noise that make every hair on James’ body stand on end.

It was incredibly difficult to describe at first, but then he manages. It’s a combination of moans, groans, wails, giggles and dry coughs — but all sounding like choking underwater or trapped under a thick layer of liquid, sort of when you take a dive under the surface of the sea and try producing any of those. And that is only remotely the closest thing James can think of.

The thumps themselves are irregular, rhythmically incorrect, and, most importantly, coming close.

Something moves from the corner of the next hallway crossing with this one and pretty soon, the stillness of the night, and stillness of James himself, is completely broken by a figure walking into his line of sight.

It’s frantic, odd and all over the place. The slender, long-limbed form seems to be half-dancing half-continuously-falling on a slippery surface. Like ice-skating, when people lose their footing so they flail their arms and legs in a swim-like attempt to regain balance. Only this one never falls. The movements aren’t looped in a sequence, either. The arms and legs are weird, too. Cartoonish and all bendy, with seemingly no joints or bones to split them into halves biology is very mathematical about. Probably why when it looks so unnatural when they move.

The thing that made it more terrifying than it already was, thinks James, is probably the lack of any sound except thumps of the feet when they’d come in contact with the wooden floor. No shuffling of clothes, hair, cracking joints, not anything. Just thumping and horrible muffled noises.

Then, like a light switch, the figure goes stiff. It’s like James hit the space button for a video to pause. One second it’s a hectic mess of limbs, and in the other, a statue. James’ breathing stops in sync when in this brief pause, he recognizes the shape and the colour which are, in the dim light coming from outside, very solid and very real.

The head slowly, slowly turns to the right to face him and James’ hearts revs into fifth gear. Greasy, thin hair, huge, skew-eyed owl-eyes, empty, toothless grin like letter D laying on its stomach, squeezed-in cheeks, and too, too big head for the rest of the slim body. The boneless arms are lifted comically into the air and one leg is up from the floor, bent in an awkward curve like a bridge.

They look at each other then, the probability and the improbability, James completely frozen to the floor, the figure on the other end in a comedic mid-movement stance.

Then in an unnatural, warped, glitchy speed, the thing charges towards him, arms flailing around like noodles and muffled, bubbly scream coming from the middle of the pit for mouth.

James nearly takes half the staircase with him in a panicked run back upstairs in complete contrast with his nickname. He is making so much noise that he can’t hear anything except himself. He turns to his room and slams the door behind him, leaning against them, breathing harder than he had probably ever breathed in his life. His legs shake so bad that he sinks to the floor, pushing and pressing his back against the door as hard as he can in pure panic.

When nothing happens for the next few seconds, or possibly another eternity, James manages to stop breathing long enough to listen.

And hear nothing.

Everything is absolutely silent. Other than his heart hammering maniacally against his ribcage, he hears nothing else. Leaning his head against the door, he takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, popping them back wide open at a single, muffled sound to the other side of the door.

A smothered dry cough.

James sits frozen in place, back and arse going stiff and screaming in pain in protest until the first rays of light start inviting birds to scream their morning songs. Throughout the entirety of the night, he hears thumps and small sounds from downstairs until about an hour before dawn when the house is finally, finally silent. He doesn’t dare move until he is startled by rapping on his door and Willow’s eager voice telling him to wake up.

For the following two nights, James is woken up by noises and soft thumps coming from downstairs. He has to pee both times. But he doesn’t leave the room even if it kills him.

Upon departure on the third day, tired and exhausted, drowning out Jeremy’s rambling from passenger seat, he realizes he is going to have to have a long, careful conversation with his niece.


	10. Animal Instinct

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is one of two prompts where my head was blank, so I kind of cheated.

“Aww, mate!” exclaims Richard in something Jeremy recognizes as horror and bewilderment, even as it’s hollowed by hoarse dryness followed by two coughs of equal quality, or lack thereof.

“What? I didn’t do anything”, Jeremy fends, turning in the chair from the laptop where he’s typing notes for his next column.

“No, not you, ape! The- - oh, just look.”

With a sniff, Richard holds out the phone in his hand for Jeremy to see. Reading glasses already on nose, Jeremy leans in and realizes it doesn’t do at all. So with a grunt of effort, he pushes off of the chair and takes the phone in his hand as it’s been shivering with Richard’s effort to hold it extended out.

It’s an article about otters. Specifically how these floating cuties have their own bad side, almost as bad as ours. And how.

“They rape each other, mate!” Richard half-squeaks in effort to produce as much vocal intensity as his bewilderment desired. He gestures weakly and exhaustedly out the huge hotel window from the bed into the heavy rain showering over Indonesian tropical landscape. “There’s an animal out there capable of intentional rape out of spite, of other species as well, holding their young at ransom and ripping each other apart for sport.”

“Shall we add it to your extensive animal phobia list?”

“Bastard”, if Richard had strength to throw the pillow at him, he would, but instead he just shudders into the covers, wrapping them better around his shoulders propped up against the head of the bed. “I just… I’m having a hard time comprehending there’s an animal species so, well… similar to ours.”

Jeremy makes to give him the phone back, but then withdraws his hand, eyebrow crooking. “Are you supposed to be on the phone if your head hurts?”

Richard frowns up at him above glassy, unfocused eyes. “Need a distraction. Is all.”

“Oh, well. In that case.”

Without asking, Jeremy sits on the bed and kicks his legs up onto the mattress, shoes already off so he needn’t have worried, crossing them at the ankles. He pushes himself up until his back is resting against the soft-foam headboard, sitting very close to the other man, but choosing to leave him space if he wishes for pride’s sake.

“Stop me when I say something you know”, says Jeremy, absently staring at the TV ahead, volume turned low due to Richard’s irritable headache and augmented senses. “Bored ducks can become rapists as well, and their erection can be twice their body length. Dolphins do cannibalism and torture their prey. So do polar bears. Koalas have chlamydia. Orcas kill sharks by suffocating them. Hippos run faster than humans. A mob of meerkats has assigned dictators who direct who’s mating with whom. Female emperor penguin can steal another penguin’s chick and when she gets bored of it, she just leaves it to the elements and predators. Harpy eagle does a smiliar thing. A snail can sleep for three years.”

Jeremy could only see a two-way street from this listing monologue, minding not to come across particularly gruesome stuff or anything related to spiders; it will either weird Richard out and make him verbally trying to stop Jeremy while pulling all sorts of faces, or the monotone flow of Jeremy’s voice will manage to calm him down.

Healthy Richard would most likely be the first outcome. The sweaty, fever-burning Richard who’s thankfully just stopped vomiting every fifteen minutes only hours ago, well…

Sure enough, the exhausted younger man shifts a little so he is pressed against Jeremy, seeking warmth in his feverish daze even under a duvet and several more layers of thick blankets. Richard barely feels the back of Jeremy’s hand coming to briefly rest on his forehead. It’s cool, the hand, and Richard tries not to whine as it retreats, inevitably scooting even closer so he can rest his head in the crook of Jeremy’s arm.

“Sick humans also become all cuddly and needy”, Jeremy adds, smirking, but he carefully shifts the edge of the duvet to tuck it gently around Richard's chin, then lifts the arm and wraps it around the smaller man’s shoulders to allow him more space.

“Do shut up”, croaks Richard, but nuzzles his arm slightly and shifts himself into a more comfortable position. The woollen material of Jeremy’s dark blue slipover feels incredibly warm and Richard relaxes into the older man with a soft sigh, listening to whispering rain and quiet happenings on the telly in a language he did not understand and letting them guide him back to sleep.

Jeremy hums a soft aimless melody to himself, staring at the TV, which melts into a low-toned sentence. “I suppose… we all have instincts.”

He wants to quote Hugh Laurie. He wants to say, ‘ _We are selfish, base animals crawling across the Earth, but because we’ve got brains, if we try really hard we can occasionally aspire to something that is less than pure evil_.’

But he lets Richard rest. That’s the only thing the smaller man needs right now.

And Captain Slow with that bloody tea, probably lost in trying to find his way back to the room. Jeremy can’t move to go look for him, but Richard’s phone is thankfully still in his left hand, so, tipping his head back to stare at the screen through glasses resting low on his nose, Jeremy one-handedly manages to text James on his whereabouts.


	11. Autopsy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a real-life man called Tarrare who lived in 18th century, and still remains a   
> a phenomenon to both old and modern medicine. 
> 
> Sort of sequel to chapter 8.

Tiverton, north of Exeter, even norther than Dartmoor, is a pretty civil, calm town, its inhabitants would say. Perhaps the secret is that there’s never a sense of any rush, not even in traffic. Not even locals can explain it, even as, if you asked them, they wouldn’t even really bother to.

It’s at an equally peaceful health centre a little past nine on Wednesday morning that there’s a crash at the main entrance. The waiting area doesn’t react immediately, the rhythm of the morning still slowing everyone down. Calmness and an occasional squeal of a baby followed by instant shushing noises of their mothers are accompanied by something more aggressive.

Now it’s a question mark. People begin looking around, turning heads towards where the noise was coming louder and louder down the hallway.

A tall elderly man crashes into the foyer, stumbling clumsily on long feet and producing sounds no man ever should. He is full of wheezes, stroke-inducing coughs and he’s retching and hurling, compressing his protruding stomach, clearly trying to eject something out that is in a more than uncomfortable place.

It isn’t only the noises he makes and the fact that he crashes to his knees with a look in his eyes so livid that they’re bulging out of their sockets like billiard balls that makes several people — mothers with children in particular — make a beeline for the exit. It’s that he looks and reeks of a horrid mixture of b.o., garbage, filth and urine. A smell that is just enough to empty the plastic chairs so even the slowest of geriatrics were out in seconds.

“Fork!” he gags and wheezes as the nurses and medics pile into the foyer. “ _Fork!_ ”

Then his arms slide and he sinks facefirst onto the floor, produces a few more shallow, panicked, squeaky wheezes and, drooling all over the floor, makes that eerie sound of final judgement — a death rattle, before his body shivers once and goes completely still.

* * *

They ship him off to the nearest hospital in a black bag where he is promptly ridden into the elevator and down into the morgue.

There were no fingertips or teeth to analyze his identity by, but one young student in practice manages. He doesn’t believe himself at first, but image comparison is enough to draw conclusions. Unbelievably, but yes. They have found Jeremy Clarkson.

He’s heard about the disappearance of a famous journalist and TV presenter, and now he sort of realized why no one could ever find him. This man looked like absolute ruin, and it had nothing to do with being dead. Half teeth missing, dehydrated skin, gnawed lips and fingers, some nails bit off, most hair fallen or ripped out, not to mention numerous skin infections.

So fighting revulsion at the smell, they cut the Y shaped incision across the abdomen.

And holy Mother of God…

The gullet is so large it looks like a sewer pipe rather than a long, compressed space that can barely push down an antibiotic. The lungs are pushed back upwards, squeezing the heart into an unnatural, wrinkled imitation, all to give way to a massive protruding stomach.

When they smother cowardice long enough to cut into it, they are hit by the firecracker of puss. Thank goodness protective goggles and face masks are mandatory. Still can’t hide the smell.

There is stuff already protruding out of the incision and the enormous stomach sagged a little like a blown-out balloon. The more they pull out of it, the more appalled and staggered they are. Bezoars, pellets, clumps of ooze-stuck hair, straws, aluminum wrapping, pieces of plastic and thin metal, one small branch, an entire skeleton of a fish or an eel, and a bone looking suspiciously human among many others.

There was no any fork.

* * *

The autopsy report said 'suffocation' as a cause of death despite no clear evidence of one ever being present.


	12. Kaiju

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [this picture](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/e413e12a-cfd7-47c4-8f1b-842c5529b965/de6zcrb-65c7f6df-6da4-4a7e-bee6-2777ee7f9ac6.png/v1/fill/w_1280,h_1173,q_80,strp/monstober_day16___kaiju_by_remarin_de6zcrb-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOiIsImlzcyI6InVybjphcHA6Iiwib2JqIjpbW3siaGVpZ2h0IjoiPD0xMTczIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZTQxM2UxMmEtY2ZkNy00N2M0LThmMWItODQyYzU1MjliOTY1XC9kZTZ6Y3JiLTY1YzdmNmRmLTZkYTQtNGE3ZS1iZWU2LTI3NzdlZTdmOWFjNi5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.cINdfaUvi7VEFMBWzxUKYtv6mk-aH6FQvmlTdbgB2CU).

“This is where the west ends and the east begins”, says Richard philosophically, pointing at the vast open ocean, dark and terrible.

“Technically we’re in the middle of the Pacific, so it can be interpreted as either”, corrects James in his own way. 

“I will fling one of you east and one of you west if you both don’t shut up”, growls Jeremy in the reclined wooden chair, enjoying the wind on his face and salty scent of the sea, immensely grateful that night time brought shelter from inescapable daily heat. Not to mention driving all day around the island, meeting people and trying to stay hydrated at the same time.

Each Hawaiian island has been breathtaking in its own way, and now they have only Kauai and Ni’ihau for the final day tomorrow and Jeremy is already melancholic about leaving such a beautiful place of oblivion behind. Time spent completely disregarding whatever European or other-country-related troubles to come all the way here and explore the gorgeous, creative side of volcanoes is the only time worth spending.

O'ahu has more to give than just Honolulu, Jeremy had also discovered. As here, on the completely opposite side of the island, locals showed you can have an equally good time. Down there, on the beach, there is light, fire, drinks and music. People hanging out, singing, laughing and hula dancers being quite a view.

“But if we went east to west, then that there should still be west”, James insistently points out towards where Richard had gestured.

“So according to you, Japan is west?”

“Well, to us, it is. Actually, it can be east _and_ west, depending on where you turn.”

“I’ll drown you two, I’ll make you drown each other unless you shut up”, Jeremy threatens again, already mentally preparing their friend’s demise tomorrow. He still keeps his eyes closed and tries to ignore the stubborn backache from today’s rough treatment.

“How about we meet we are in the middle — because we are, in the middle of the ocean — and let the princess have her beauty sleep?” suggests Richard subtly to James, leaning a bit from his recliner, and then back down when James taps his coconut with a straw against Richard’s.

There’s a few seconds of non-conversational silence with only wind rustling, crickets, music, conversation and laughter from down below. It’s a moonless night, so light and fire from the beach is the only source of light apart from the stars. Jeremy feared it’d be too much for his eyes if he surveyed them this night as intently as he had last three nights.

“Still going west”, mumbles James.

“May, I’m going to shatter you like glass.”

“We are!”

“I don’t care where we are— oh, I see. It’s because I nearly allegedly pushed you off the cliff when I rammed into you that one time today.”

“You almost did, you utter imbecile, and I’m still pissed.”

“Can you two argue tomorrow?” interrupts Richard, snuggling deeper into the cushioned easy chair. “But stop talking, James. Jeremy was onto something here. Just try to enjoy, mate.”

“I _am_ enjoying. I _do_ enjoy a nice, empathetic conversation.”

“We enjoy silence, that’s two to one, so.”

“And I enjoy nice and peaceful rides.”

“Oh for crying out—”

Even as Jeremy had meant to leave the sentence hanging, he’s been interrupted when the ground violently begins shaking followed by horrible rumbling, as vast as the ocean ahead, accompanied by the vehement seismic motions of inner Earth.

Richard, fastest reflexes galore, immediately reaches for the other two, grabbing them by arms. He drops his coconut which lands and bounces pitifully off the grass, spilling the rest of the fine drink.

James has just discovered his new fear and he firmly grabs Richard back, trying to ignore the swarm of wasps his brain has turned into. Richard releases the sound of pain, a half-whine. James is uncertain whether it was something hitting him, a product of fear, or James’ death grip.

Then, just as suddenly as it had come, it stops. The Earth stills and James can breathe again.

“Are you alright?” Jeremy’s voice emerges, swimming around them. He is brought to James’ attention only when he reaches across Richard to touch James’ arm. James meets Jeremy’s decisive, firm gaze. Nods once. Looks at Richard. Alarmed, but well. Alright. We’re all alive.

“What was that?” James tries asking as Richard stands up to look down from the elevation they are situated upon, down onto the beach and people mingling around and trying not to panic at the thought of the worst. Music from the speakers hadn’t stopped, but singing has.

“I sure hope it isn’t the volcano”, says Jeremy ostensibly casually, looking up into the sky as if expecting to see a giant ball of fire starting to rise behind them.

“Uhhh, chaps…” Richard calls from ahead, looking over the edge of the elevation. He sounds distant. “Come see.”

Jeremy and James do. Because Richard’s mouth hasn’t given them detail it usually would.

The sea is retracting, crawling backward steadily and unrelentingly, caressing past the moist ankles and edges of dresses until only wet sand remains and angry shrimps and crabs, scattering along the drying land in perplexed confusion.

People begin shouting and pointing at the horizon. The three men follow the extended hands and fingers.

Far away, something enormous rises from the sea, darker than darkness on the horizon. A silhouette of a solid form, abnormally colossal and very much alive. It rises high into the air, surpassing the height of the largest cruise ship that would appear ant-like small next to it. The only distinct feature is a row of thinning glowing red dots where its head supposedly was.

It only becomes clear how much swaying and alive in its enormity it is when it releases a broad otherworldly roar that spills across the air and sea all the way here.

Richard grips Jeremy’s shoulder and grabs James’ wrist. Very firmly. A sign the other two are too mesmerized and thrown back to notice even as screams begin to spread among gathered people and the mob begins to run.

The red dots begin to grow as they make their way towards the shore.


	13. Lambs At The Gate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one is very personal to me, so in a way, it's skippable. 
> 
> ArkVerse AU. Has some Grey Novelette if you squint.

The patient on the other side of the metal door has no arm available to extend out the small barred window of the door, so he chooses instead to gnaw on it, eyes fixated ferociously against the tall man with the suitcase. This man, mid-thirties, hair impeccably done, has the sort of intelligence in his icy blue eyes that even the most stubborn mind in the room would acknowledge and give way to. This is the man of practicality and quick execution. This is the man with no place in life for doubts and hesitation.

 _Mongoose_ , thinks the man with the suitcase, observing the bald patient biting furiously against metal and drawing blood, drawing the attention of the nurses. _Doesn’t lurk in the shadows and stalks up to its prey like most predators. It attacks boldly and without hesitation, with the sole goal to kill._

“We called you because you are the best in your area, Doctor Vargas”, says another man, young, bespectacled and dressed in a white coat, sounding insecure because the suitcase gentleman’s attention was still on the patient. Shrill unintelligible screaming can be heard farther down the hall. Essentially the entire building is arranged on the principle of gradation. The worst cases are just here, on level –4. A place the young doctor dislikes probably just as much as anyone else in this hospital.

“Doctor Vargas, if we can push things a little faster because we are full”, says the short, curly-haired woman by his side, trying to nudge the visitor’s respect by taking a slight bow, clutching a cluster of medical records against her chest. “We know you specialize in parapsychological cases as well.”

The attention of the man with the suitcase now falls onto the woman and she almost recoils at the impact of a cold, calculating gaze.

 _Margay_ , the ice-eyed man thinks again. _Pretty- and harmless-looking. Masters of manipulation, capable of mentally torturing their prey by mimicking the cry of scared baby monkeys to lure their prey towards them._

“Doctor Landon…”, he finally speaks in an unrelenting, low, composed voice. “As one professional to another, I think you are aware that individuals in all these rooms are prisoners of their own illusions.”

“We are”, the female doctor nods. “But… they say you can, umm… identify with the patients. Get into their heads.”

“Let me be clear about one thing, doctor”, says the man, handing the suitcase to the floor’s official and fixes the cuffs of his sleeves, and then the tie which was already impeccable. “I do not admit to what a patient is saying. The deeper you delve into their heads, the easier and faster you will solve the problem. Simple mathematics, wouldn’t you agree? Less expensive than meds, I would say.”

“Not here”, says the doctor with glasses. “He’s, umm…”, he clears his throat. “Even physical and formal evidence of his existence doesn’t add up.”

“How is that my problem?” The colour of Doctor Vargas’ voice doesn’t change, but a small propensity of annoyance wrinkles a dent in the middle of his forehead.

“Because he is not supposed to exist”, the young man says plainly. At the older doctor’s quizzical gaze, he lowers his own, uncomfortable under the assumption he might’ve been less methodical about speaking the nature of the matter than he had intended. “Come with us, please. He’s a floor down.”

“I thought this was the deepest level.”

“That’s the thing about him. He has his own floor. Minus four and a half.”

* * *

Floor –4,5 consisted of only one cell. And it was, to the hospital’s visitor, more of a display in the zoo or aquarium. It consisted of one lengthy hallway and a huge room on the right side, divided from the hallway by large glass instead of a wall. The room is lighted up with white lights and all the walls are covered in spongy patches similar to chair rests, equally white.

In the corner of the room sits a figure in state of unrest. It’s a man dressed in a straightjacket. Rocking back and forth in a steady rhythm and nodding his head, having a formal discussion with himself. His hair is in the process of losing colour and turning dark grey, which will, through the following years take a silvery turn.

“Cristiano Ronaldo can jump the height of two meters”, the man says importantly. “Cristiano Ronaldo also limps with a cane because of a tiny little clot that gave his right thigh an aneurysm which left the muscle dead. This is called ‘string theory’.”

“His name?” asks Doctor Vargas.

The other two look at each other before the woman says, “James May.”

A deeper, more palpable frown appears on the tall man’s face and he turns. His expression tells him he is no man of practical jokes, but the two young doctors remain dead serious.

“Pardon me”, he begins carefully, shoving the patient’s ramblings to the back of his head. “Granted I am not most informed about this particular matter, but isn’t James May around his sixties now?”

The young pair eye each other again.

“That’s the thing. When they first found him, ran finger and dental recognition, he popped up as James May. I mean… he sort of _looks_ like himself, if you look closer.”

Doctor Vargas faces the enclosure again.

“Pub open 25 hours a day!” apparent-James May exclaims in a tone of a show host, grinning at the ceiling. “Come over, you’ll have a blast. When 12:01 lastly hits, you will be _rrre-born_!”

Doctor Vargas attempts to recall whatever he can about the man called James May. Tries to recall all the times he’s seen him on television — and truly. He can only just notice. Aside from a bit wider mouth and larger eyes, the similarity is uncanny. It’s like someone has taken real James May and put him through the time machine from which the man had emerged thirty years younger.

“New flesh, new bones, new consciousness, new self”, lists James May, shaking his head from one head to another like a child citing a song. “Eenie-meenie, who is first? Who’ll offer a heart to burst? And remain cursed. Through eternal thirst…” shake of head in a ‘no’. “Just the worst… Just the worst…”

“Have you re-done the checks? Blood analysis? DNA? Brought someone to confirm him?” asks Vargas, not turning.

“We have. The database still has him as James May. And…” the young man hesitates slightly, again. For someone in his line of business, he is dangerously hesitant about many things. “We didn’t bring anyone. Since… how do you explain there is a man in the hospital who, by all rights, already exists out there?”

“So you let him live in his own illusion in which he’s managed to drag you as well?” Doctor Vargas is pointing at the man in straightjacket. “Have you decided at some point to converse with him?”

The pair look puzzled. “Converse, sir?”

“Make verbal contact, as it is otherwise known, to establish communication between two or more people?”

“No.”

“So at no point have you tried to decipher what he is saying in case he might be more intelligent than for this clothed prison you hold him in?”

“No.”

Vargas sighs, turning back towards the cell. “No wonder they asked for me. An imbecile cannot solve their own problem.”

He steps onto the small elevation and comes very close to the glass. He clears his throat and suddenly, his stoic, professional expression is replaced by a quite ordinary one you may find on the face of a passerby on the street.

“Uh, sir?” he calls out.

The man immediately stops talking and his head jerks directly his way and Vargas almost flinches. His eyes seem impossibly wild, and it takes him a second to realize the man’s irises are completely white. His eyes consist of pupils and a very, very thin line surrounding them at radial distance.

“Lambs! Lambs at the gate!” he screams, elated.

“Lenses?” Vargas asks briskly.

“Patient is terrified of grey colour”, the young man cites in the voice of a student who is jabbering textbook definitions by heart. “The lenses are filled with modified photoreceptor cells so that everything is seen in augmented amount of colours. We believe they are his own product.” The tone then turns sheepish, and a bit frightened, then. “We tried to take them from him. He’s killed two doctors with his bare hands when we managed to take one. We concluded they are better left where they are.”

“Have you come to watch Judgement fall?” James May asks Vargas.

“No, in fact I’m here to ask you several questions. Do you mind?”

“What will you give me?” asks James May.

“What do you ask?”

“I want out.”

Vargas puts on a mask of sympathy. “How about we start smaller? I tell you what you want to know, you tell me what I want to know.”

The man who looks like young James May sits still for a few moments and a dissociative look rests in the unnatural lensed eyes after which he gives a single nod. “Alright. For now.”

“For now”, promises Vargas. “Shall I begin, then? Is your name James May?”

“No. It used to be my name. Now it isn’t anymore.”

“What is it, then?”

“Not James May.”

“Can you tell me the date and place of your birth?”

“January 16th, 1963, Bristol.”

“Alright”, Vargas is simultaneously checking the file given by Doctor Landon. “How many accidents has Richard Hammond had?”

“None”, says the man in straightjacket. And then, before Vargas makes to look pointedly at the two young people, adds, “But that’s Richard Hammond form _my_ reality. He died of Münchmeyer’s disease when he was 29 years old. Horrible, _horrible_ death. I have never met him. _Your_ Richard Hammond had _two_ major accidents, one which shattered his knee, the other which shattered his soul. As for the smaller ones, heh. That’s debatable.”

“You come from another reality?”

“Yes.”

“What is that reality?”

“Mine.”

“And how did you come to this one?”

“Walked the Ship, I have”, nods James May. “Miscalculation of Judgement, but you have to forgive it, it is, after all, responsible for the fate of very many people. When it realized its mistake, it’s sent me back, but it’s missed the reality I’ve first come from.”

Growing more fascinated with every response, Vargas bites his bottom limp, eyes squinted, looking forward to the next part now that he’s embossed a vague figure of this individual’s perspective.

“Then why do I have a feeling you don’t wish to return to your original reality you’ve been ripped out of?” Vargas asks making sure it could be interpreted as a literal _and_ rhetorical question.

James May’s head rises. He grins broadly and toothily. _You have asked the right question, for once_. “Realities are irrelevant to me. I am merely the world’s rescuer. All children of this world, worthy and just, are welcome into the wings of Gelin Sor.”

James May looks up in awe like a child looking at fireworks and Vargas decides to follow his gaze. He almost looks stunned. Almost. A mere shift in the icy eyes.

The entirety of the spongey ceiling is carved. The tools might’ve been nails and teeth, but the artist, the Michelangelo, was clear to the image in his head.

Of a huge _en face_ insect with large eyes and even larger wings, of which the span spread from one end of the ceiling to the other. It’s morbid and terrifying how professionally detailed it is.

“Rescuing from what?” asks Vargas, looking back down at the patient. His voice has lost a shy of its cool. 

“From the Ship’s suffering eternity, of course”, explains James May, grinning.

“Of course. Excuse me.”

Vargas steps off the elevation, hands in pockets of expensive pants paired with the suit. He almost looks smug. Again — almost. Anything other than coldness, he gives in half-emotion, but here, now, he might’ve given a little more of himself.

The pair of doctors look horrified, almost helpless. Vargas’ face wasn’t designed to comfort them.

“Gentleman and lady, I can see what you have here.”

“A crank?”

“No. You have an impostor. A very, very detailed, very talented, very dedicated impostor.”

The young man crooks an eyebrow and the woman looks even more perplexed by this. This is a professional mental hospital. They didn’t hold impostors here.

“With all due respect, Doctor, I think we would’ve noticed that”, says the man. “Believe it or not all kinds of people attempt to apply here.”

“Do you think that if I wasn’t aware of that I would be here?” Vargas tsks, having this half-annoyance across his face again. “But you can rest easier. This man is neither James May, neither is he insane. He is just way, way too brilliant.”

Two young doctors are, predictably, confused in their limited fresh-out-of-college thinking.

“Do you remember the modified lenses you mentioned? I bet you my penthouse they are most certainly his design. This isn’t the first case of the kind I’ve had. In his desire to escape whatever dull, tragic past he’s had, he had learned to hide from the world which had wronged him. Not only mentally, but systematically as well. At some point, he might have convinced himself in all the things he claims since stubborn repetition makes a dog in training comply.”

The woman detects movement and shifts her eyes past Vargas’ head. And screams.

Vargas turns just in time to see the man charging at him with a look of a crazed animal just as it jumped out of its hiding spot. The straightjacket lay limp sprawled in the corner.

“ _You!_ ” James May slams a fist against the glass with the widest, maddest grin under wide, piercing eyes of white irises. “Have _no_ idea what’s coming. It’s not the matter of believing whether there is life out there, it’s the matter of how far. And in fact, they are so far that even if we’ve built a spaceship remarkably close to the speed of light, we still wouldn’t be an inch closer to the next cluster of galaxies because they are moving apart farther than the speed of light can fill the space between. But he has a plan. The Moth has a plan”, James May’s voice drops to a whisper, fist flexing to extend a shaky index finger. “He intends to _push_ the universe _through_ the Ark so that the speed of light becomes irrelevant. The Ark will be upon us, Doctor. Hell doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

While the young woman is trying to cry as least hysterically as she can and her colleague is killing the emergency button on the wall, Vargas merely smirks at the face inches from him and glass barrier splattered with saliva.

“You will forgive me if I will merely admire your sleight of hand, Mr. May”, he says softly. “This dedicated level of forgery and acting skills surely required an awful lot of time. And I respect that. But nothing more. You may have turned your tragic story into some semi-reality you’ve chosen to share with all the individuals in this hospital, but I’m not buying it. I think you’re a chameleon. I think you can be _very_ colourful, Mr. May. But ultimately, your tongue is your swiftest weapon, isn’t it?”

“So you hide behind trustful results of your analytic decipheries and believe their firmness, do you?” James May retaliates.

He grins, and his unnatural eyes glimmer strangely as he relays the following,

“Let me offer you this threat. I will come to your apartment and unscrew every lightbulb in your house just enough so that the light will not turn on. I will not take anything. I will not be there and I will not place anyone there. But darkness has a way of making you think in a way the daylight salvation never could. I want you to feel fear and confusion bubbling above your head when you look at the microwave and see the digital display of numbers glowing green, the red dot on the TV and the fire alarm blinking dutifully, but nothing else to navigate you through the very place you feel safest.

I will be let out of here, Doctor. And when I am, I will do onto you what people like you have done unto me.”

The twitch of a smirk Vargas has to offer comes almost naturally. He shifts the file under his other armpit as security barges into the hallway, shouting something. But the man on the other side of the glass hears the tall man’s final words nonetheless. “We shall see.”

As Vargas makes his leave, the security buzz themselves into the cell.

“I have seen _my_ end, Doctor Vargas”, yells James May after the departing man. “And I have just offered you an insight into yours. Hope you appreciate that the next time we meet.”

The visitor doesn’t look back and as he is being dragged back to his corner, James May throws his head back and hollers with full force of his throat as the security wrestle against the sheer strength of the man.

“Lambs at the gate! Hoping for something better than clover when all they find is something worse than slaughter!”

* * *

It’s four days later that the minus fourth floor is as busy as it gets. People are being led one way and another by people in white coats. The employers are conversing with each other when they can, exchanging relevant and irrelevant information. The bar-gnawing man is suspended in the chair in his room. The ever-screaming patient hasn’t yet lost his voice.

The elevator in the lobby part of the floor bings. The door opens. A figure steps out. The steps are followed by the sound of dragging metal.

The man out of the straightjacket stands in the middle of the hallway. One nurse notices him first and jumps away with a slight scream, attracting attention from other employers. One doctor drops all the papers he’s been carrying and nopes all the way down the hallway and towards the elevator that goes to the rest of the floors.

Seeing the sight, the security guards begin shouting into the radios. Several men in coats carefully approach him with hands raised coaxing him into prevention of the inevitable. A nurse is calling the authorities. 

A patient points at him and yells, “Baba Yaga!”

Head still lowered, James May grins. 

“Destiny knocks on the door”, he giggles and throws his head back. “Laughable! Destiny is here to be destroyed! I am Deman Yameno and you are the witnesses. I slaughter colour so you could bathe in the springs of their tides, shielding you so from the Grey Ship that seeks to devour you. Rejoice! For you are about to be embraced by the wings of Gelin Sor!”

The most unexplainable thing happens then. James May gasps loudly and holds his breath. On cue, chromatic property of every object in sight begins to leave its object. The walls go from blue to a light grey shade. The brown of the jacket hung on a hanger goes dark grey and colour snakes down onto the floor like a twodimensional snake towards the standing man and up his legs, his belly, his neck, his cheeks and crawling into his eyes. And it’s been so with all objects. And people. Screaming, irrelevant people, madmen undifferent from people with doctorates.

At the same time, the depth of James May’s eyes begins to fill with colour. Not brown, cadet blue or pale orange of the chairs. There is neon green, yellow, pink, bright blue, poison red, electric purple, annoying orange and some colours that have no right to exist at all. It keeps filling them a physical, thick solution, like the strongest shades of tempera mixed in a single can until it’s completely covered them and, as it keeps incoming, the psychedelic mixture begins pouring down the man’s cheeks in thick tears.

James May releases a loud, throat-scratching, completely obnoxious groan and there is a bulge growing in his pants as his erection presses against the rough material of the hospital pants.

He lowers his head back down with a face-splitting grin, multicolour tears leaking into the corners of his mouth.

* * *

Police and emergency vehicles arrive only twenty minutes later. Twenty minutes. Only to come to a complete massacre. Every existing individual that has been in the institution at the time on every floor, has been axed to death. Blood is absolutely everywhere, smeared across the walls, flowing in static streams down the hallways, hanging off the low lamps, splattered across cameras. The bodies scattered all over the floor, in the chairs, leant over the furniture. Madmen and people with doctorates.

On the entrance, even before the horrified policemen first enter the building there is a huge message, written in still drying, crimson blood smeared across the glass entrances.

**THE LAMBS ARE SERVED**


	14. Numbers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James May gets an envelope with mysterious content.

Seeing this many papers piled up on his desk takes him back to _Mail Time_ days and James, tapping a pencil on the edge of his desk and bored out of his mind, decides it’s finally time for the demolition of this paper tower. 

With a sigh, still in complete disbelief his schedule had emptied enough for him to be _bored_ , James takes the first envelope and begins with the purge.

Mostly just as boring content as James had predicted; invitations, applications, exhibitions, some fan letters, some of them threats, and even bills. He puts those aside for Lucy to take and carry to the management offices. The rest he’s flinging into rubbish. He takes one particularly rude letter and turns it into a crane.

The cardboard envelope he grabs next is large and firm and James frowns at the tiniest bulge residing at its bottom. Like a pebble.

He opens it particularly carefully like the pebble has bombastic properties and tips the envelope over so the small tough object falls into his palm.

It isn’t bombastic, nor is it a pebble. It’s a common, black USB drive.

James flips the envelope several times, but his name and Drivetribe address don’t change nor do the ones of a mysterious sender sprout up.

James hesitates just a little before plucking the tiny device to the side of his computer. Since he’s alone in his office — for the first time wishing that he wasn’t — he turns on the speakers instead of putting it on earphones since there was nobody to disturb.

The USB contains only one nameless folder in it. The folder, a single MP4 video. It’s a little over five minutes long and it’s titled ‘64’.

James clicks on it, feeling his heart had begun running just a little faster.

The heart-racing quickly subsides about a minute into the video because excitement gets pushed out of the way by confusion.

It’s a collection of snippets filmed very clumsily and in a very amateur fashion. They mostly depict dull landscape or still life, sometimes zooming in on branches or wires or old thrown-about furniture or sewer openings so much that it becomes indiscernible what it is, what with an absurd amount of pixels, what with a shaky frame.

The only reason James doesn’t click the exit button is because following the collection of tapes (which James concludes have been filmed with one of those old video cameras rather than a modern-day phone) is a robotic woman’s voice citing out numbers. He says robotic because the voice is slightly autotuned at places and when she says ‘seventeen’ it sounds like ‘sevent-teen’.

The numbers themselves are very random. There is mostly about 6 seconds gap between each, but sometimes, the voice comes sooner, in 5 or 4, surprising James with a higher, accented intonation, like those numbers are in some way more significant than others.

The video ends abruptly. No outro, no explanation, no justification. 

When it does, James rewinds it, clicks a pen and writes them down. He ends up with 49 numbers.

He immediately notices how no number goes above 26. Knowing what it means, he immediately turns them into letters. Ends up with absolute unintelligible mess.

He rewinds the tape for the third time and circles only accented numbers. Still a mess, albeit smaller in amount.

Decisive about breaking this through, James heads out of his office and down many stairs and across the entire building. He gets lost three times, of course, and breathes a huge sigh of relief when he finally sees a trademark sign of an ape’s head tattooed across the wall.

James opens the door silently and carefully peeks around. Sure enough, for once in a million years, Richard Hammond is actually at his desk, writing something with a pen.

“Hammond?”

Richard’s head snaps up, a huge grin lifting immediately to beam back at his friend, ecstatic to see him. “James, mate!”

James looks around his office nervously, calculating whether the amount of people in the room is too big to have to take the conversation outside.

Richard, predictably, notices. His grin falls into a concerned expression. “Y’ alright, mate? Is everything fine?”

When James beckons him with two fingers, Richard doesn’t hesitate to join his friend in the hallway.

“Did you burn the kitchen again?”

“Very funny, no. I actually need your opinion.”

This isn’t unusual for the three of them. They share opinions practically the entirety of time spent together. Had James asked him for help, _then_ Richard could talk about concern.

As it is, he follows the other man upstairs without many questions, even as he’s impatiently vibrating with the air of mystery.

It turns out Richard is equally perplexed, if not more. In fact, he admits he wouldn’t be able to come a step farther than James had already. They had been huddled together around the screen, temples practically pressed together as they penned suggestions down, but each one tangled them further and further into senselessness.

“No idea, mate, I'm sorry. It’s not my forte. Willow is better at this kind of thing than me”, the smaller man sags, feeling intrigued, but useless.

“It’s alright. Thanks for trying to help anyway”, James smiles lightly, rubbing his burning eyes.

“And no return address is given?”

“Nope.”

“Do you know why it’s called 64?”

“Not a clue.”

“Maybe it’s like the meaning of life. 42”, Richard muses.

James eyes him carefully. “I think you’re right about it not being your forte. You are kindly excused back to your own headquarters before you divert us further into complete nonsense. Which wouldn’t be a first.”

Richard throws a pencil at him but misses by at least a meter, but before James can return the fire, Richard had already escaped.

* * *

James is reading Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32 and is doing remarkably well in his opinion, concentrating on chords in right hand while his left is busy alternating outspread thumb and pinkie in a wide trill in low octaves. He’s having such a difficult time that he inevitably sticks his tongue out in effort, amazed by the pain spreading from his shoulders to wrists.

Until Sarah’s head peeks into the room and says in quite an annoyed tone, “use the metronome, for crying out loud.”

James looks at her, fingers still frozen on the keys. “I’m out of rhythm?”

“You aren’t just out of rhythm, you are out of this Solar System.” Mumbling something to herself, because being in tempo is quite important to ballet dancers _and_ former ballet dancers, she digs in the cupboard and pulls out an old mechanical device with an inverted pendulum and puts it on top of the piano.

“Try and find your way back to Earth”, she quips, embracing him from behind. “You have all the time in the world.”

“Yes, darling”, he says gently, accepting a kiss on the cheek.

She leaves and James adjusts the weight to a reasonable tempo and lets the pendulum rock and tick. It’s much the same speed as the one of a ticking clock. Makes it much easier to balance the trill and the upper chords and the pain in his arms completely leaves. Surprise, surprise…

He repeats the phrase several times and decides to lower the weight on the scale, making the pendulum move faster. James feels as if his heart has begun to synchronize with persistent ticking.

_Time, time, time…_

Then it hits him.

He just about flips the entire piano with the speed he stands up and grabs the device.

“Sarah”, he yells, practically running up the stairs towards his little office.

“Yes?” she calls back from the kitchen.

“You are the woman of my life.”

“I should hope so.”

* * *

Having the pendulum tick at speed 64, James writes down only the numbers that come on beat with the numbers the robot lady cites in the video. When he converts the numbers he had gotten into letters, a great smile stretches on his face, even as he has no idea what the word means. But it’s a word. An actual word. Not a swarm of random letters.

**DERMATOGLYPHICS**

Through a more thorough analysis and renewed vigour, James discovers the location of the video snippets have been filmed on the outskirts of Eskişehir, the city in Turkey.

Whatever either of those mean.

* * *

For four years now, twice yearly, James has been getting mysterious envelopes and packages with various contents. Photos, inscriptions, pocket-sized books with marked pages, strange contraptions, pieces of music and audio recordings. He’s been led to the libraries, into parks, churches, on squares, to theatres, to neighboring towns and villages, even to a remote lighthouse in Scotland one time. And he would always either hit a dead end or it would simply mean the end of the puzzle because the only thing he is left with is a written word or phrase with no relation to anything or each other. So far he has _dermatoglyphics_ , _fractal 2_ , _polyhedron_ , _paleoseismology_ , a collection of symbols from a Tibetan praying wheel, some coordinates that pinpoint a bare spot in the middle of the Pacific ocean, and a Belarusian phrase that could be translated as ‘the little girl with a flower’.

He still has no idea what they mean or who keeps sending them. But he is having the time of his life.


	15. Hodag

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boys go caving in Wisconsin. Something doesn’t want them there. And it’s not the Americans.

“Why did we have to go here?” complains Jeremy and cameras haven’t even gone off. He is speaking between heavy breaths, trying to stuff the magnesium powder-covered fingers in small hollows and on safe protrusions. “Why didn’t we go to Thailand or Vietnam or China? They have so much more interesting caves.”

“Because we’ve been there already”, reasons James, stopping to catch a break. Even as the harness has been doing most of the job and the camera crew is doing an even better one helping from above, lifting your own weight even partially is exhausting. “People are going to notice and complain about us being repetitive.”

“Yes, but I have been doing some geography”, Jeremy begins, looking for a foothold. If James struggled to hold his own weight, he isn’t even going to try putting himself in Jeremy’s shoes. “And you know where we haven’t been, ever? On the island of Terceira in Azores archipelago in Portugal. There are all sorts of volcanic caves over there.”

“And I told you it’s way too touristy over there to film this time of year”, Andy yells from above. He is allowed to, the snippets of them climbing out are perchance going to be put in the film only behind voiceover.

“Since when have tourists stopped Amazon in favour of less interesting filming content?” Jeremy shoots back. “I can’t anymore, I’m letting go.”

“If you let go, we all fall down”, screams Richard from down below. “Why did we even allow you to be the lead, I have no clue for the life of me.”

“Because if he makes a mistake, we can blame him”, says James, loosening the rope in the rappel device as a signal for Richard to get a move on. “Why couldn’t we just get separate ropes?”

“Because an expert told me those have a tendency to tangle”, responds Andy with a bemused smirk as Jeremy’s helmet-covered head just started to reach the edge of the opening. “And we would hate to have either or all three of your plummeting back into the hole.”

“Come on, Hammond. The fat cock is almost out”, calls James, not really keen on turning around. A grumpy instructor whom they had annoyed previously had explained to him keeping his head up prevents vertigo the same way looking forward while crossing a suspension bridge does. James decides to trust that theory because the grumpy instructor was just a bit less grumpy while advising him about it.

Jeremy clumsily climbs out with one leg extended as far out to capture as much edge as possible, fighting against his bulk with torturous grunts. The safety team helps him, but their efforts appear about as efficient as trying to pull a humpback whale onto the beach.

The oaf is eventually out, awarded by sarcastic applause from Andy and the crew. He fearlessly crawls to the edge and peeks over, smirking smugly at the next to reach the top.

“Come on, Slow, before bears decide this is a good place to hibernate.”

“I’m not the slow one”, protests James, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. “He’s been sitting in one place for minutes and I don’t even have to turn around to see it.”

“I’m having some knotting problems”, complains Richard from farther down. “My figure of eight is acting up.”

Since they cannot physically reach him, the instructors and local caving safety guys from above are shouting him instructions. Richard half-listens, half-applies it, and partially tries to grasp it himself.

“Hammond is it possible that you have been outrun by Captain Slow?” yells Jeremy, already extending his hand for James to grab as leverage even as the younger man was still more than an arm’s reach away.

Richard will remember this moment for the rest of his life because just after Jeremy finished his sentence, he feels the first tug.

He pauses mid-action, certain he had imagined it and looks back down to pitch darkness, quickly regretting it when vertigo overwhelms him and he jerks his head back up and puffs his cheeks as he exhales a few times, just as they have been instructed.

“Hammond?” calls James from above. He isn’t looking down, but he has stopped.

“I think I just… never mind”, Richard shakes his head and checks the claps on the quickdraw, adjusting the harness and makes to reach for the next protrusion with his hand, when he feels it again.

A tug from below.

Richard risks another glance.

“Come on, Hammond!” shouts Jeremy from above; his voice bounces off the moist cave walls. Richard ignores it. Fixates on the bright red rope.

And this time he sees it.

An insistent tug like a child testing out a climbing rope in a park to see if it’s safe. Richard becomes aware of a pull on his harness when the tug repeats.

“Stop that James!” Richard frowns up.

“What? I’m not doing anything!”

“Jeremy!”

“What?” The older man’s intonation jumps two octaves. Richard can see the silhouette of both of his arms when he lifts them up against the light of the outside world. “It’s not me, honest! What is going on?”

Richard mouths when he sinks a whole meter. He makes a startled sound of ‘whoa’ scratching at the rock. His heart stops for dreadful several seconds before Richard feels it beat again. He clutches at the cave wall as hard as he can before realizing the harness and the ropes are all in order. Nothing gave in.

Richard frowns.

“Hammond?” Jeremy, or James, or Andy.

He wants to respond. But there is another tug and he sinks again. And then another. Another. Another.

Richard is trying to scramble back up, but every attempt is smothered by another pull from below, deep in the darkness.

This isn’t coming from anywhere above. This is coming from down there.

Something is pulling him back down.

Fast.

“Woah! Guys? Guys? Help. Help! _Help!!_ ”

He goes from confused to scared out of his mind in seconds, watching the cave opening grow smaller and smaller just like when they first began descending. Only this time, he is going the wrong way, and not by his own reluctant will.

The pull happens every two seconds and Richard can do nothing to stop it. He can’t secure his right hand, can’t clasp the harness, can’t capture the karabiner. He is restlessly being pulled back into the depth.

“Hammond?” comes James’ voice from above, alarmed, but almost unintelligible thanks to the distance Richard had already crossed between himself and his mates. Slipping further and furter away from salvation.

Richard looks up, trying desperately to cling onto the rope, but the force of the pull is so strong that the rope is just being forcefully pulled through his palms, undoubtedly burning them and ripping the skin open.

“ _JAMES!!!_ ”

That scream instills unnamed horror in James’ heart, squeezing it like a sponge. Filled with despair and fear. It echoes unrecognizably off the stone walls and hurts James’ ears, filling his brain with a single content; Richard Hammond does _not_ make a noise like that.

James looks down.

Sees Richard sinking. No, not sinking, this looks wrong. Richard is flailing for the rock, trying to scramble up it and his hands are bleeding. He isn’t controlling the rope at all. Jeremy is yelling something from above, joined by the chorus of the crew and the Americans.

James nearly unclasped all the hooks and plain jumped back into the gorge after Richard. In time he remembers the only thing he has to do is loosen his right hand.

He abseils quickly and almost professionally with a high whistle of the rope through the rappel device until he sinks to Richard’s side and grips the younger man’s harness. James locks the pair of them to the protruding karabiner just as there is another tug on the rope. A very strong, insistent pull.

James unfolds the knife from his belt and shoves it into Richard’s hands. “Cut.”

Perhaps because he is in a state of sheer panic, Richard immediately reaches down below his hip without question and begins cutting. It’s difficult because the rope is dynamic and consisted of many thin knots that make it firmer. Richard grits his teeth and nearly drops the tool at the screaming pain on his palms, fighting the yelps at every following tug.

James noticed. Which is why he was quickly sealing his own rope with Richard’s rappel device, knotting them together in a haste, unprofessional mess. He sees and hears the karabiner squeak against the pulls that have now turned demanding and angry.

Richard is groaning now, silent tears of pain escaping him at irritated wounds on his palms. The knife handle is slick from his blood and when he passes half of the rope, he gives up and starts cutting with both hands. Nearly there.

A tug more violent than any before makes them both yell, but thankfully the karabiner holds. Not for much longer — James notes how bent the metal thing is. Another tug this forceful and they are both going down.

A loud, rapid clicking noise reaches them from the depths. Neither James nor Richard have ever heard anything similar.

With a half-scream through gritted teeth, Richard shoves the blade strongly one last time and the rope finally snaps. Because of sheer strength and slippery handle, the knife falls from his grip and disappears into the darkness along with the rope.

James quickly unclasps them from the karabiner. “Pull!” he yells up towards the opening.

Much in a similar rhythm, Richard feels both of them being pulled up like fish from the lake. Richard’s breathing is laboured and he is shivering, but James’ arm is there around his shoulders, keeping him secured and sane. James is here. James has come to his rescue.

They are alright.

The light becomes stronger and he looks up. There are faces looking down at them, among them the big oaf’s as well, washed with concern and relief at the same time. He is holding out his hands towards them.

Richard accepts one with no hesitation.


	16. Sleep Paralysis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn't real. I know that, and I also know that if I'm careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.”_
> 
> — Stephen King, ‘Night Shift’ (1978.)

Jeremy loves work above all else. Being bored, being stuck at home with nothing to do to the extent one starts to deliberately destroy their own home just to fix it again is one of the worst things that’s happened to humanity.

Jeremy loves work. Makes sure to show the world every day.

But sometimes, on the other side of the scale, Jeremy gets overworked without even realizing and he is so exhausted he can’t even get drunk. Sometimes he aches all over his neck, shoulders, back and arms so much he can barely drive and his head is so sloshing with fatigue that he has to shake his head every few seconds to keep the focus where it’s supposed to be.

Those days he is well aware going all the way back to the country is not only demanding, but dangerous as well. This week has been particularly demanding, going between his farm, the offices and helping Emily and her fiancé situate in a temporary apartment. All of which kept him on his feet from six in the morning until about ten in the evening.

Once the day is over, he’d head home, eat a late dinner and attempt to go to bed. ‘Attempt’ because for whatever reason, Jeremy’s body wasn’t having it. He’d continuously drift in and out of sleep never reaching that deep slumber. He would stay up until three or four in the morning before falling asleep purely out of exhaustion before the alarm began screaming in his ear at six in the morning so the entire cycle could repeat.

Over the last three days he’s had maybe eight hours of sleep.

His rescuer is James. In the most passive, but wholly sanative sense. Jeremy’s had the key to James’ old flat the man's gotten almost two decades ago practically since they first met. It was Richard’s refuge many times before he’s rented a flat of his own for his family when going to and from the country became too exhausting. Now it’s Jeremy’s salvation and he wants to kiss James for it for how grateful he is in this dizzy state.

On the fourth evening, his body had had enough. Tired out of his mind so much that he’s stumbling, Jeremy parks in front of James’ flat. He sends a one-worded text to James, unsure which, but just to let him know he’s borrowing it for yet another night. Jeremy fumbles with the key to unlock the door. He enters the silent small place, not bothering to turn on the lights.

A pretty siamese cat is sitting on the counter by the door as if it’s been waiting for him, blue eyes glimmering in streetlights from the outside. Neighbour’s, according to James. The neighbour has four little kids and the cat has found a narrow crawlspace or something to James’ apartment and is using it as a resting place from too many tiny, grabby hands.

The cat greets Jeremy with a tiny, quiet meow and Jeremy briefly brushes his fingers against its cheek in return before stumbling straight for the bedroom. No wine, no dinner, no TV, nothing.

He flops onto the bed, still dressed, coat and everything, barely kicking the shoes off — and he is out like a light.

He wakes up some twelve hours later the next day. Doesn't get up, stretch, welcoming the morning like a Greek nymph.

His _body_ wakes up.

Jeremy is still laying there on his stomach, in the same position he’s flopped onto last night, not ready to face another day, so he resumes the position.

Soon enough, he feels something crawl over his legs at the foot of the bed. He doesn’t think too much of it since there were countless times he’s woken up to the cat curled up at his feet, all cozied up and purring, giving Jeremy a hard time debating how to get up without disturbing the content animal.

If Jeremy isn’t half asleep, his body would recognize that it isn’t the cat.

Cats don’t weigh that much.

Looking back, Jeremy can attribute it to one occasion where Richard had accidentally stepped over him in the dark while Jeremy slept in his sleeping bag. Jeremy can feel the blankets compress around his legs where the steps are.

Then he feels something wrapping around his right ankle. It isn’t a hard grab. It’s actually pretty gentle, but soon it begins pulling him back. Somehow, without checking for the facts, he convinces himself it’s just James playing a prank on him.

Jeremy shakes his foot. “Nu’, J'mes”, he slurs. 

The feeling disappears.

Only seconds later, though, it starts on his other ankle. Again, a soft, careful grab, and then a tug. His foot starts lifting off the bed before, again, Jeremy shakes it away.

“Fuck off, May”, Jeremy mumbles into the pillow.

Momentary respite.

Then both of his ankles are grabbed and firmly begun to be pulled backwards. It isn’t forceful, but in the sleepy daze, Jeremy allows it to go on for much longer. His entire body begins slowly moving down the bed; he can feel his shirt rolling up and the sheets rustling underneath the movement as he is being pulled closer to the closet at the foot of the bed.

Finally, something in the rational corner of Jeremy’s brain clicks and he jolts awake and scurries across the bed to the opposite corner at the head of the bed.

Disoriented, he turns around, breathing heavily.

He just about manages to see the closet door gently shutting closed, conducted by a long, thin, ashen-grey limb.

To this day, he is positive he has seen this. It wasn’t his fatigued brain playing games. He could hear a soft thump when the closet door shut.

He’s just about to call James out when he hears the lock in the front door turn and the entrance door open, followed by the footsteps.

“Hello, there, gorgeous”, Jeremy hears James coo, followed by soft tongue clicking.

And a soft, mellow meow.

Jeremy stares in disbelief as James reaches the open door to the bedroom, jacket swung across the forearm, jingling keys in the other, smirking at the sight of dishevelled Jeremy.

“Sleeping Beauty didn’t even manage to get out of the coat”, he notes. “I’ve brought beer. And coffee, of course. Em tried calling you, but I guess you left your phone on mute. She says she and Alex can take it from here and that you should rest, but I’m guessing you’ve already gotten to it since it’s nearing noon and I’ve obviously just woken you up.”

Jeremy continues staring in disbelief, unsure of how long. Slack-jawed, he alternates wide eyes between the figure of James and the closed closet, which he vaguely recalls being open all the time, including last night.

James’ smirk falls. “What?”

This seems to break Jeremy out of the trance. In one swift motion, he crawls across the bed with unbelievable agility given his mass and bone problems. He swings open the closet door.

Nothing there. Just some of James’ clothes. And some of Richard’s shirts.

Jeremy is shoving the hanging gear, frantically searching.

“Jez?”

With no result, absolutely confused and more than weirded out, Jeremy leans back on his knees and stares at James like the younger man will provide him with an explanation.

James looks another kind of puzzled. “Everything alright, Clarkson?”

Jeremy is in some pensive state for the entirety of afternoon from which James can’t snap him out of. But at least he’s appreciative of the coffee.


	17. Presupposition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A missing number in the equation. A broken chain link. A torn-out page. A glitch.

He was just going for a stroll. Richard was just. Going for a stroll.

Already old, but intact in spirit, Blea is running far ahead on swift legs, looking back ever so often to see if he is following. He is always there, of course. Sometimes she runs back to him, sometimes she waits for him, jumping away for another speed run when he mock-charges at her.

Walking like that up and down the grassy hills, sun steaming from above, not too warm, not too cold, nothing hurting him, it looked like nothing could go wrong. Richard feels unambiguous happiness practically lifting him off his feet, even as he is well beyond his fifties. He feels and thinks beautiful. He’s grinning all the while and his cheeks hurt, but he doesn’t care. He is still smiling because his life is perfect.

Richard will never forget this.

Because it’s the last time he will ever be happy again.

When he reaches the top of the next hill, Blea stands there, looking up at the sky. Slightly out of breath, but in a positive way, Richard reaches her and whistles, calling her.

The border collie doesn’t react. Keeps staring. Then starts growling at the sky.

Richard looks up, thinking she’s spotted an eagle or a hawk.

There is nothing there. The sky is empty.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

Blea barks once between the growls, backing up slightly and dipping down, like something massive is hanging overhead on very thin support.

The world suddenly turns slightly darker. The grass, the view of the neighbouring village, the forest, the fields — all gaining a darker shade.

Richard looks back up.

Clouds.

Richard blinks.

Clouds.

How? How is this possible?! The sky was clear as a tear the whole day. No clouds all the way to the horizon and over. They appeared from absolutely nowhere.

These clouds surged in, swirling in and over themselves, obscuring the sun until it was a bright round white spot in the middle of the sky before enveloping it completely, swallowing it.

Richard shivers. The air suddenly turning cold is only a partial reason.

Another long growl makes him face down again.

Blea is facing him now, tense as a wire, legs spread, tail poking out straight forward like a dagger. She is eyeing him impeccably and warily.

“Hey”, he takes a step, going to pet her and make her turn around so they can make their way back home. He doesn’t like this.

She barks sharply and the meaning is clear: not a step closer.

Richard flinches back, flabbergasted. “Blea?” His shock has an exclamation mark behind the question.

He tries again, more carefully, trying with soothing words, but the dog keeps backing away with warning barks and growls.

“Alright, that’s enough. Come on. Home, girl”, Richard whistles sharply, knowing it always works.

Not this time. Blea barks once more, half turning. Then she jumps away and runs off down the hill. Opposite way from where they came from.

“Blea!” screams Richard, immediately running after her, not heeding for the lack of stable ground underneath his feet. His heart is thumping. Newly risen pressure in the air is squeezing at his temples, but he doesn’t care. He has to catch his dog.

The border collie has such a headstart that Richard loses sight of her. He climbs down all the way to the village and walks the gravel tracks all around it. He is asking people if they had seen her, but nobody has an affirmative answer.

When he still can’t find her when the sun starts to set, Richard sighs, reasoning with himself that he is just going to have to return the next day. He will take Mindy or one of the girls with him. What the hell has gone into that dog? She is one of the smartest, most loyal dogs Richard has ever known. This isn’t just abnormal behaviour for her. Before this, Richard would call it impossible.

It occurs to him at some point halfway to home how nobody in that village seemed to recognize him. Even one old man whom he and his family were acquainted with. Or maybe he was just having a bad day. Hopefully better than Richard’s.

When he reaches home, there is very little light left. Regardless, even from farther away, Richard can see something is wrong.

His mini-castle is in complete darkness.

Despite the fatigue of hiking and walking around all day, Richard still manages to summon the strength to run.

He reaches the main two-winged gate.

That are sealed shut with a chain and a rusty key lock. Richard grabs it and shakes it in experimentally. Firmly locked.

A paper on it says “ _Bollitree castle – Property of Herefordshire county. **NO TRESSPASSING**_ ”

_What the- -_

“Mindy?” he calls loudly, beginning to round the huge building, looking up at the dark windows. Hoping, _praying_ it’s just a prank. “Mindy?!”

Richard’s blood stops its flow at the sight that greets him in the vast yard, where horse sheds are supposed to be.

Well, are.

Half-ruined. Unkempt. Vacant. Dark.

No horses, no goats, no donkeys, no ducks, no dogs.

There is no garage. His motorcycles, his cars.

Nothing.

No one.

“Izzy?! Wills??”

Even as dark completely falls, Richard hasn’t moved anywhere. He tries the front door very vehemently, pushing, pulling, kicking and hitting the chain with a rock. Nothing works. He rounds the castle five times, each time coming closer to hyperventilating, brushing his palms over the walls in panic like they might bring the building back to life.

He finally accepts the looming fact: the building is completely abandoned. Somehow, everything and everyone just aren’t here.

Maybe they left somewhere. Just for tonight.

Brought all the animals with them as well? Sure, why not, wouldn’t represent Mindy a problem.

Maybe it’s an incoming surprise for him. For whatever reason.

Cold, confused, tired and beyond scared, Richard withdraws into the barn to shield himself from the wind. He lays in the hay, positioning himself so he can see his house through the glassless window. He stares at it, waiting for one of the windows to illuminate and end this ever-growing sense of dread. But the darkness remains, solid and unrelenting.

Richard’s eyes fall shut from heavy fatigue and he falls asleep.

He is woken up by an unlikely sound — a throat being cleared. Opens one eye.

A uniformed man is staring from up at him, hands on hips, an eyebrow risen comically in question.

“Oh, thank God”, says Richard, partial relief unclutching his frozen muscles, letting the eye fall shut. “Mind telling me what’s going on?”

“You tell me”, comes a response, definitely not amused. “Not usually a question someone trespassing on government’s property should feel inclined to ask.”

Richard’s eyes are now wide awake, frowning at the man. “What do you mean? I own this house.”

The man snorts. “Yeah. And I’m Carl Sagan’s disciple. Come on. Split, tiny.”

Richard couldn’t believe his ears. He shoots up to his feet without realizing he’s made such a move. He nears the man with no fear, only astonished anger. “Excuse me?”

“I believe you heard. Take a leave, nice and easy, and nobody gets hurt.”

“Do you have any fucking idea who I am?”

“Should I?”

Richard’s heart sinks a little. “I’m Richard Hammond. And your superiors will be very interested to hear how a proprietor of this land is being treated.”

“Look, chum, everybody thinks it’s somebody, and there’s a lot of hobos like you in these parts, so you will forgive me if I don’t remember you all by name. Now”, before Richard can protest or fire back, the man growls, undoing one of the buttons on his belt, which Richard eyes and suppresses a shiver when he sees it’s a gun. “You will find very soon I am a man who does not like to repeat himself. Out. Now.”

“Alright, alright, calm down. I’m sorry”, Richard automatically raises his hands and backs away. “I-I’m just trying to find my wife and kids. We’re cool, mate. Can you- if you could help me find them, I’ll be on my merry—”

The weapon gets drawn and a yelp escapes Richard when he jumps away.

“Out.” Cold. Final. Promising. “Now.”

Richard escapes the barn so fast his backpack slings off his arms three times. As he’s running away from his home, he looks at the front once again.

In broad daylight, he recognizes it even less.

* * *

Halfway down the street, he remembers the phone. He fishes it out of his pocket, cringing at the puny percentage of battery. Should be enough for one phonecall.

He hits one on speed dial with no hesitation. Presses the phone to his ear.

Please, God, just one phonecall.

The line beeps three times.

Then, “Hello?”

Richard’s breath explodes out of his chest. “Mindy.”

“Yes? Who is it?”

“Very funny. It’s me, Richard. Where are you?” His words are haste, but he cannot help himself. To only hear the voice of his wife, the love of his life… Richard can’t stop grinning.

A second’s pause.

“Who?”

“Come on, Mindy, cut the joke. I get it. It’s been funny, we’ve all had a laugh, now tell me how you did it.”

“Did what, who is this?”

Something about Mindy’s voice makes Richard’s grin falter and his heart tip over dangerously.

“Mindy. It’s me, Richard. Your husband.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. I’m very sorry, you have the wrong number. I don’t know any Richard and I’m already married.”

Richard nearly screams because Mindy sounds scared. Like he’s some kind of a creep. A stalker. A stranger. Mindy’s never played him like this. She has never pulled a joke to this extent. All her celebratory surprises have always been pleasant, a welcoming sight to come home to. She is an honest woman. One of the many reasons he’s married her.

Then Richard hears the words from the background. “Darling? Who are you talking to?”

He doesn’t recognize the voice.

“Some loony, honey, don’t worry. I’m very sorry, sir. Please don’t call me again.”

She hangs up.

Richard stands there, in the middle of the street. Pays no heed to the passer-by’s giving him weird looks and grumbles about holding up pedestrian traffic.

He slowly lowers his phone. A lone tear creeps down his cheek.

* * *

Richard finds an internet café. Thank goodness he’s still got his wallet.

The waitress is a sweetheart. She brings him the espresso. Sees the look of utter distress on his face, brings him another one with a whisper of, ‘it’s on the house’.

Richard thanks her profusely and goes to surfing the web.

He _needs_ to know what is going on.

Fifteen minutes later, he almost wishes he’s kept himself in the dark.

Richard checks the dates, the sources, the year, the papers, the calendar, even asks a young man who gives him a weird look — day, month year, everything is in order.

But according to web search, there is no Grand Tour.

Top Gear did start from 2002. Ended in 2012. Lack of interest, apparently.

He sees Jeremy’s name. He sees Jason’s name. Jason Dawe, whose face he hadn’t seen in years. And the third bloke, of whom he’s never heard in his life.

This is wrong.

This is so _infinitely_ wrong.

Where is James?

Where is _he_?

Feeling sick, heart thundering out of his chest, his fingers barely cooperate and he repeatedly has to hit backspace before he finally manages to punch his full name in.

Nothing. Vague similarities of people with the same name or similar surname. The electric organ as well, apparently.

He isn’t there.

His first and last names paired up together don't exist.

He looks up for Mindy on Facebook.

There she is. Married alright, to a random bloke. Has three kids. None of them are Izzy or Willow. He doesn’t recognize them. He only recognizes Mindy.

Her familiar smile, not meant for him, makes his stomach turn.

Richard barely reaches the toilet before he throws up a little amount of coffee that he’s drunk. Fights tooth and nail against bursting to hysterics.

When he comes back out ten minutes later, he searches for one more thing.

* * *

The door opens and a figure of stubbly, dishevelled, sagging, hungover-looking old man appears in the doorway.

Richard can’t help but grin. He feels like an absolute child. “Jeremy.”

The man pulls an expression halfway through an eye-roll, jaw going slack in the universal sign of ‘oh, no, not another one’. “So you found out where I live, huh?”

“I did have to dig, I admit”, giggles Richard, ecstatic to see his friend alive and well, fighting the urge to hug the living daylights out of the big cock. “I’m so happy to see you.”

Leaned against the doorway, Jeremy snorts. “Not something I’ve heard in a while. Come on”, Jeremy folds his fingers at him repeatedly, inquiring.

Richard’s grin shivers. “Come on what?”

“The shirt, the paper, the photograph, whatever it is I have to sign.”

“Sign what?” Richard splutters, the final string of hope that there is some sense of normality slipping away from his grasp. “Jezza, it’s me. Richard. Come on.”

“Yeah, good for you. Stop wasting my time so we can get over with it.”

“No. No, please, you have to remember, Jez. It’s Richard Hammond, from Top Gear. You, me and James, we were a team, remember? We _are_ a team.”

Jeremy’s glare turns even more toxic. “You need to get off your meds, pal. Or _on_ them, if you aren’t. I did do it with Dawe and that other blithering idiot. I loathed him so much I couldn’t wait for each day of filming to be over with. Fact I’m so glad we quit pulling all of our legs when we did before he could drive me properly bonkers. I can’t even remember his name”, he smirks a little, like the thought brought him a tad bit of satisfaction of which he is usually dehydrated.

“Yes! Yes, because you _didn’t_ do it with him. You did it with me and James. Remember James? Captain Slow?” Richard steps closer, desperation growing in his chest. “We went all around the world, the three of us!”

“Alright, that’s enough now. Time for you to leave or I’m calling adequate people who are going to put you in a nice little white room and wrap you in a nice warm white jacket.”

“No, please, Jezza, don’t do this to me, please. You have to remember, it’s me! I had a crash in a Rimac, broke my knee, you thought I had died when the car caught fire. Years before I crashed in a jet car and nearly died and you still called me a shit driver.”

“Look, you midget, if you’re just here to waste my day with some sappy sad story of yours, forget it. Get the hell out of here.”

“No, Jeremy, you have to remember, please, I’m your—”

_Bam!_

He sees the stars, half-registering he’s flying through the air for a split second until he brutally hits the gravel, biting through his tongue and tasting metal. Moisture is sprouting out of his eyes. His jaw is ringing like a gong. His ears are buzzing before he finally remembers he is supposed to breathe again.

He turns over on his elbow, touching fingertips to his lips, seeing them red when he moves them back.

Jeremy steps back into the house, growling briskly over his shoulder.

“Fuck away from my house, you crackhead. And if I ever see you again, I will punch your fucking throat in.”

The door slams shut.

Richard is laying there, stunned, blood mixing with salty traces on his face.

* * *

Beer is lazily, sadly circling in the glass mug. There’s little foam. There has been in the past three rounds. The wallet is getting thinner. There appears to be no account to withdraw from, though. Pub’s environmental vibe wouldn’t usually feel so melancholic, but usually, when he’s here, he is with his mates.

Richard stares through the bottom of the mug. The beer is still spinning.

He’s never felt so, so, _utterly_ alone.

“Bad day?”

Richard’s head snaps to the right. He can’t have heard right.

Sure enough, a barstool away sits a ragged man of familiar features, just like his voice. Only these features are a bit off. They don’t fit the voice to its entirety. This man is thinner, weaker, messier, drained, tired. And completely pissed.

Richard cannot stop himself from breathing, “James.”

The man stops mid-lift of his beer, squinting at Richard. Sunken cheeks, sick-looking appearance. Richard fights vomiting for the second time that day. The eyes, the deep lines around them — it’s undoubtedly him.

“You know me?”

Maybe not being entirely sober either helped, but Richard still has to control himself very firmly for this next move. “Uh, yeah, you… write columns, right? On cars? Yeah. Big fan of your work.”

Much like Jeremy earlier that day, James makes an equally half-sarcastic snort, nonetheless accepting the outstretched hand. He is so drunk he doesn’t notice Richard holding onto it a touch longer than would be considered normal.

“Wrote them, yeah. Long time ago. But I got tired of getting fired every few months because those twats can’t grasp the concept of a personal opinion. But no big deal — at this point I’m too busy getting drunk to care.”

Richard tries not to visibly flinch as he's trying to keep the conversation normal. He frantically searches for words in his brain hoping the other man doesn't notice. "Oh, uhh... I'm sorry. What, uh... what do you do now?"

"Mend motorcycles. Clientele business", says James, swinging the rest of his beer. "Good and bad days. But at least there's no one hanging over my shoulder telling me what to do and how." He grins. "'Course they may yell from the front if they're not satisfied, but a large enough wrench can be very persuasive."

"Have you..." Richard gulps, feeling fear gripping his fists around the mug. "Have you been on a telly? Ever?"

"Small portion. Top Gear. A year or two in late nineties. Dun' remember."

Richard does flinch when James slams the apparent amount he's drunk onto the counter and makes to stand up. The younger man realizes he's running out of time. 

"Have you ever wanted to go back?" Richard asks. Half-eagerly, half-dreadfully.

James gives him a long look. There is something beneath its depth that is so old and sad. "People change. Life is cheap. You take what you can and give nothing back. That's the only way to pull through."

He clumsily pats Richard on the shoulder.

“Go home, man. If you have one”, says James, stumbling towards the door. Richard watches as another of two of his best mates in the world turns his back to him. “There is nothing for you here. Only bottomless pits.”

For the third time that day, tears surprise him with their presence.

* * *

Richard tries working tiny jobs at first. Cashier in a gas station, waiter, in drive-through. Works for a while. Cold bottled water and a warm sandwich become his greatest daily pleasure.

He sleeps wherever he can where he isn’t risking being chased out. When he does find such a place, he is awarded with a bit less stress and anxiety than he usually would be.

He cries himself to sleep every night, clinging only to hope that the next morning will finally be the one where he really wakes up. Sees his wife, daughters, family and friends again. His. Who recognize, remember, and love him.

It’s been years. Mostly drowned under the veil of all sorts of substances.

He still hasn’t returned.

From wherever _this_ is.


	18. Hanahaki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You made flowers grow in my lungs, and although they are beautiful, I can’t breathe._
> 
> _Hanahaki_ (花吐き病 (Japanese); 하나하키병 (Korean); 花吐病 (Chinese)) = a fictional disease where the victim coughs up flower petals when they suffer from one-sided love. It only ends when the beloved returns the feelings or when the victim dies.

Jeremy is fucked.

He needs to find a way out. Fast.

It’s an entirely strange day, and he’s dropping off James from the pub to his house. Strange day, because they are both in an excellent mood, have been even prior drinks and they are laughing and grinning all the while. Not something he would openly admit to, but to himself, he was allowed to: this was definitely the highlight of the week.

James opens the car door, gathering his leather case. “I’m not going to that gala night, Clarkson, it’s pointless and it’s for unintelligent, and if you heard anything I have to say, you would’ve seen my wisdom.”

Allowing himself to be driven crazy just for a little longer, Jeremy counters one last time. “Malarkey. How are you afraid of stepping into a puddle when you walk down the beach and let the waves wash over your feet?”

James frowns, the mimic betrayed by the amused glimmer beneath his eyes. “With my shoes. Wow, Bukowski. Isn’t it funny when a person is hungry but will duck if you throw an apple in their face?”

Before Jeremy shoves him out in an entirely unfittingly playful manner out the door, there are two seconds of an eye-contact out of this icosahedron of time, blue clashing with blue in a congealed bridge transferring a limpid anomaly from one pair of ocean vortexes to another.

It’s broken without even properly existing and the two men bid each other farewell without further ado, James retreating to his home without looking back. 

Jeremy resumes the ride, all warm and happy and fuzzy, not feeling at all annoyed when he stops for a red light that’s just manifested itself in his face.

Something tickles him in his throat and he clears it firmly.

It doesn’t relent and prods more insistently, so Jeremy curls a fist and coughs into it.

A single planned cough turns into a torrent of lung compressions growing in strength and something semi-solid is forcing its way up his throat. Jeremy ducks his head below the visible point and for a few seconds he’s in the dark until an angry honk snaps his head back up, forcing him to blink a shoal of black dots away and perform necessary acrobatics to get the car moving.

He blows air out of puffed cheeks, trying to chase away leftovers of odd, fluttery sensation at the back of his mouth. He rubs his tongue along his palate and notices a colourful oddity poking into his vision from below. Swivels his gaze down for a second before jerking it back up.

As realization settles in, Jeremy swerves to the side of the road with a loud screech, thankful he isn’t anywhere near buildings or people and hits his head against the ceiling of the car when he forcefully mounts the curb.

Only briefly acknowledging he didn’t hit anyone, now safe in stagnation, Jeremy looks down. At the spillage of joyfully yellow flower petals, piled in soft clusters in his lap, over his thighs and on the floor. Those in particular have started to adopt a dirty grey-brown shade from rough treatment conducted by the soles of Jeremy’s shoes.

Jeremy feels his stomach squeezing and he nearly ejects all the beer all over the inside of the windshield.

It relaxes when, during the drive home, Jeremy manages to convince himself he has had a little too much despite minding the intaking quantity and having no problem navigating the lanes, and at some point bought flowers along the way, but changing his mind in the last minute and throwing everything away besides the pretty heads. Or maybe they had fallen out of James’ suitcase.

Either way, his stomach relaxes, and that’s all that matters.

Everything is normal for the rest of the weekend.

Until he has to come back to the office on Monday.

Richard explodes into the collection of cubicles and desks and starts jabbering about things that have and don’t have sense with work and Andy has to stop him by shoving some tea into him to even it with caffeine. Richard better stick to bad office coffee.

James is fashionably late as always. He doesn’t have nearly as an explosive overture as Hammond, but he approaches Jeremy with a gentle inquiry to shove between the lines of an already existing script accompanied by a dazzling smile.

Jeremy stares. The bridge is there again for a moment. Just there.

Until he accepts it maybe a bit too loudly because James flinches back at the booming voice of the older man, but it was the only way Jeremy could snap out of it.

They work on it together for ten minutes before it’s back. That soft, tickly feeling at the back of his throat.

When James asks him if he is alright with mild concern and a series of blinks, Jeremy barely manages to excuse himself and he’s already barging out of the office door and coughing profusely. Near the toilets, he is capturing yellow petals that escape him.

He coughs and vomits his soul out into the sink.

Stares at a little yellow hill he’s created in the sink.

Staggers a few steps into the toilet cubicle and throws up for real. Normal gruesome concoction of stomach acid and remains of breakfast. Allows himself a few minutes to stop shaking.

Jeremy makes a few rounds from the sink to the toilet until the small pile is there with the vomit before flushing. He takes a few gulps of water from a cupped palm and, fearing to look at his reflection, walks out before something else happens.

* * *

In the _Top Gear_ studio, under the red blinking dots of the cameras and hundreds of watchful eyes, Jeremy asks James is that car going to be sold in the UK?

James’ gaze is there, liquid and shimmering, warm and light. Unblinking. His face framed with soft-looking hair, impossibly perfect. There’s an inner battle in Jeremy against himself from reaching out with his hand and doing things to it. To him. Luckily, they are stuffed in his pockets.

James shakes his head a no and verbally confirms it.

Jeremy is late with a brisk response and handing the spotlight over to Richard just a tad. Just a little.

As soon as Richard starts talking, Jeremy retreats as undetectably as possible among rows of people and curious cameramen.

The pile he coughs up in the hallway is an admirable size of leaves he’d rake in his backyard.

Jeremy almost runs out of the building screaming before a professional side of him remembers show must go on.

* * *

It gets worse.

Petals turn to flowers. And those are harder to cough out.

Jeremy pulls little hair he has on his balding head, not understanding. How, why and to whom he can ask nobody.

James is casual and himself and more mesmerizing, more differently observed every day.

James. Everflowing around Jeremy’s dizzy, pollen-dusted mind.

Only James.

Only yellow flowers.

Jeremy thinks about it once, immediately cuts himself off, but when thoughts and flowers continue unstoppably flowing, it becomes the only possible solution. Possible, a word that now rightly is only impossible.

* * *

He calls in sick. Doesn’t show up for a week. Luckily, they have time. Pool Championship is this Sunday. That's why nobody asks any questions.

* * *

Finding himself whistling in spite of cloudy day, James collects the remainder of things he needs consisted of wallet, car keys and a meowy approval of Fusker which he feels free to interpret as a greeting. He is meeting Richard in the pub. James tried ringing Jeremy up, but the man doesn’t respond. Fact, he hadn’t responded once in the whole week any of them had tried contacting him. As soon as he is done arranging something he’s wanted to discuss with Richard, they’ll drive over to him to check on the ape. Concern doesn't do good unless it's justifiable.

James swings on the jacket, strides to the front door and opens it.

Nearly falls right back on his arse, hands reaching out to grab two edges of a doorway in a death grip the only thing preventing him from doing so.

Jeremy is on his hands and knees, straining to keep himself upright, elbows shaking. He is making noises only a martyr would make, breaths coming out in harsh, painful pants.

There is a fucking tree growing out of his back, curved roots sprouting from his lungs between his ribs and leading a short, knotted, bendy trunk into fickle branches that pierce towards the sky, adorned in pretty, beaming yellow flowers.

Jeremy looks up at him, face twisted in pain and anguish.

“James”, he whines, blood shivering off his chin. His eyes are pleading, leaking tears of both kinds of pain. “Please…”

James doesn’t say a word. Cannot speak. He drops to his knees in front of Jeremy, bracing himself against the ground with one hand and clutching Jeremy’s head to his chest with the other. He shudders and clenches his teeth so hard they grind against each other while Jeremy wheezes and gasps, wide eyes staring at mighty, so familiar bright yellow petals.

Jeremy bleeds all over his grass.


	19. Twigs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> G-man from video game series “Half-Life” is such a uniquely exquisite character that I had to borrow him for inspiration. 
> 
> Sorry for the mind-fucking.

When Jeremy steps into the forest clearing, leaves crunching traitorously under his feet, his eyes bulge out comically and his finger shakes in the direction of approaching figure. “You!”

Richard, who has been fuzzy and disoriented up until this point, jumps when the voice explodes in the air, popping him back to reality. His expression twists to one of confusion, disbelief and mild disgust. “Jeremy?”

“Why”, Jeremy utters, finger still directed at the smaller man as he risks a few more steps, “am I seeing _you_?”

“Because you have eyes, unfortunately.”

“No, I mean— fuck- - why are you here?” Then he pauses with a distant frown. His hand drops. “Why am _I_ here?”

Richard would most certainly mock him about the beginnings of Alzheimer’s, as Jeremy had predicted he would do, if he wasn’t thinking exactly the same.

So when Richard stares off into the air between them, Jeremy cautiously probs, “Richard?”

“I don’t”, Richard stammers with a cadence of quick blinks. “I don’t know what _I’m_ doing here, I was in my sitting room and…” he trails off in step with his mind, but no matter how hard he tries to think, he can’t remember what happened between his home and Jeremy’s accusatory boom. “And then I was here. But…” Richard frowns at Jeremy like the man is the right person who would clarify it. “ _Why?_ Why did I come here, Jeremy? Why did _you_ come here?”

Jeremy mouths, surveys the ground covered in dead leaves and strange circumstances he has met with Richard in. “I wasn’t even meant to.”

“What?”

“Have I texted you or something? Because if I have, which I can’t remember, then I must be really losing my mind.”

“That makes two of us”, complies Richard. “I don’t think you have, hold on.”

Richard feels for his pants back pocket, finding it flat and empty, but before he can make a face and state so…

“Oh, cock.”

The two men look either way; one left, the other right, but it’s where the third, too familiar voice uttering a too familiar phrase is.

“James?”

“You two?” the middle man scoffs, appearing among the trees. “What is going on? Why are you here? Why are _we_ here?”

“James”, tries Jeremy, shoving the infrangible question aside. “Is there a reason why you came here? Can you remember?”

“Don’t know. Well, I was mending a bike and then…” As if by invisible force, James’ easy flow of words gets cut off, ripped out of his mouth, and he frowns much like the other two have. “And now I am here, talking to you two pillocks.”

“Does any of you know _where_ we are?” asks Richard when James descends a small slope to join the pair.

Jeremy turns around himself like an undignified ballerina, looking up into thin tree tops. “That’s like being in the middle of the ocean and asking where you are. I’m…” he exhales in frustration, straining so hard to remember the journey here. Any part of it. An eye-catching detail. A run-down house, gravel road, piece of rubbish on the road. But no, wait, logic. Jeremy doesn’t walk around just like that. Jeremy takes car. Everywhere.

Richard spots movement out of the corner of his eye, but when he looks, everything is still. The woods are foggy and moist, and cold. And strangely quiet. James is facing him, looking him in the eye, but his gaze is piercing right through Richard like a laser.

“James?” stutters Richard.

“James?” his own voice floats around them, in exactly the same way.

“Woah”, Jeremy completely stiffens. “How did you do that?”

“Wasn’t me”, Richard promises, looking around. The more he looks, the more he starts to see thin peculiarities from the corner of his eye, but when he directs his gaze there, he sees nothing.

Given how the other two are swiping their heads about, they have the same impression. Here and there they grasp the concept of something thin and branch-like, akin to young, slender and flexible coniferous barks.

“Who is there?” asks James, sounding down-to-Earth enough to convincingly not appear scared.

“Who. Is. There”, James’ voice repeats, fragmented apart, almost carefully analysed, circling above their heads.

The new voice is architected from all three of theirs woven together like a kidnapper’s letter of threat consisted of many various-formated words cut out of papers and magazines. Except this one has only three fragments.

“I” – Richard – “am” – James – “here” – Jeremy. 

“Who is here?” Richard tests, now seeing a swarm of leg-like thin, moving twigs from his peripheral vision, but too scared to look.

“Who I am is a completely separate matter from why I am”, responds the voice, stuck together from vocals of Richard, Jeremy and James, like particular snippets taken from interviews and shows, abruptly cut away and then mashed up together in a clumsy, phrasally illogical separate audio. Every following word is either said in a completely different dynamic and pitch or it is said by other man. It made it extremely difficult to hear the sentence as a whole.

James stares annoyedly and insistently at a thin young tree perfectly static and unmoving farther away. Watching it for any traitorous farce that would deem it against nature. 

The voice, in response, notices. “Yes, my limbs are brittle. About as breakable as the delusion of pretend animosity which you so firmly acquiesce.”

“What are you?” dares James, seemingly the calmest among the three.

“I am, what would be closest recognizable to your language, of interdimensional bureaucracy. I have come to”, a shivering inhale, like the voice is fighting for breath, or searching for more material from the three men’s past utterances. “negotiate open businesses.”

“Interdimensional…” James repeats, blinking and fighting for sense and response to it. “So we aren’t alone.”

“Mr. May, please. As my employers have processed, your scientists are advanced enough to know that there are billions of trillions of light years between galaxy clusters you will never cross, even beyond your lifetime, nor if you would build the fastest ship with your mortal engineering minds. The universes are still much too big for your comprehension. This universe, for instance, isn’t as vast as your textbooks describe. It is _claustrophobic_ like firebugs squeezed into a tic-tac box until there is so many of them they cannot even wriggle anymore.”

Richard struggles to understand the phrases, but struggling to find the right question in these bizarre circumstances is even harder.

“Did you pull us all the way here?”

The long twigs keep swarming in their periphery, never actually showing, as if teasing them. “Right men in the wrong place for right reasons can make all the difference. There are many parties interested in your services, which you have proven to be more than capable of providing, should the need occur.”

“Interested in what?” says Jeremy after grasping the beginning and the end of the sentence under a single rope.

“Usually I would not consider them, as I am merely an intermediary,”, The voice said ‘intermediary’ in James’ voice and if the situation was a bit less brain-straining, Jeremy would roll his eyes because who else would be aware of existence of such a word than someone born in 1836. “As a consequence of preliminary repercussions, I am now forced to abide to applicable restrictions to certain extent. But seeing as they have been dividable for an extended period of time, I have taken the liberty to – _hm_ – nudge certain matters certain ways.”

In some places, the voice divides one word into two voices, beginning with Richard’s, ending with James’ or Jeremy’s. As if the gravity of the words wasn’t demanding enough, the three men had to invest even more energy to patch the sentence to its sense.

It might’ve been to chance dodging unimportant questions as the voice relentlessly continues in the same fashion,

“Still… I am not the one to squan-der my investments on arbitrary choices. You have been offered an insight into endless possibilities and their byproducts and as such you will be forced to use them to your own service should you consider the value of this level’s existence for what it is.”

“What is it?” asks James, lastly.

The voice is quiet for a moment. Even the twig-legs have stilled, unmoving. Then, it comes, sharing the vocal boxes of all three of them; the forest is so still that the silence is eardrum-detrimental.

“Prepare. For. Unseen. Consequences.”

And then something lifts from the clearing, like an invisible dome, lifts out of the air and out of their minds, and all three of them are suddenly back where they had firstly been. In sitting rooms, in garages, on porches in front of the house.

With two major differences among the stillness of their consciousness — the universe has lost its silence. And something was coming their way.


	20. Long Horse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [This](https://i.redd.it/9ogh5ec8grr41.jpg) is actually a good plot picture.
> 
> Inspired by Trevor Henderson © 
> 
> Might be crap because I wrote it with a colossal migraine.

The idea of a five-hour drive is exhausting in and of itself.

The idea of a five-hour drive during an angry, windy storm is even worse. Jeremy can only thank heavens there is no rain. When they are in the town of filming location, he makes sure to merge and be careful on the bends, feeling the car shake like a tin can every time he’d stop at a red light. He’d even seen a waste container casually roll across the road and followed the phenomenon with a slackened jaw.

Whoever had pissed off Mother Nature today, Jeremy was going to hogtie them and throw them into something the Spanish call _el hormiguero_.

James is passed out from fatigue in the backseat, his open-mouthed snores masked by the howling on the outside. Go figure. He’s woken up exhausted, been exhausted for most of the day and then after working himself up on the set and drinking a fair amount of calming wine afterwards, he looked at Jeremy with pleading eyes when they reached the car to which Jeremy only had to respond with a nod.

Richard had to run quite a distance in one segment, and this being television it was repeated quite a few times as well, from all sorts of angles, and although the role was given to a very lively man, Richard still proved to be mortal just like everyone else whilst crumpling himself in the passenger seat and warning Jeremy to wake him up when he feels he can’t even look from fatigue anymore so he can take over.

“I don’t want to fall asleep and face God prematurely because you are too stubborn”, Jeremy receives a final piercing glare before Richard allows it to disappear under heavy eyelids and a small tinge of pain twists his face when he adjusts his aching limbs, finally safe from the storm.

Jeremy stares at the rough scolding. “I’m sorry, who is the oldest here?”

“Mentally?”

“Touché.”

So Jeremy is careful, because he doesn’t want to prematurely meet God, either, and the alertness he has to move about in the town demands his concentration so much that when Jeremy finally exits it, he is even more exhausted than when he first began driving.

That doesn’t change the severity of the hazards, however. The swervy road is surrounded by dense trees, and Jeremy is watching in horror as the trees sway and bend and the leaves are dashing around like swarms of flies.

“Christ almighty”, he mumbles, swerving around the fallen branch in the middle of the lane very, very carefully. Small, sharp _tocks_ sound through the car when small twigs and dirt make contact with the car. James is that exhausted that he keeps snoring throughout it, undisturbed by the abrupt breaks and changes in direction Jeremy has to undertake on occasion.

“Woah”, Jeremy gasps softly, fretful about waking others even as a selfish part of him is feeling way too alone in this scary situation. He swerves abruptly, but as gently as he can when a particularly strong gust of wind not only nearly shoves him off the road, but an entire branch almost scrapes the bonnet in its rocketing diagonal flight from one end of the road to another.

Richard grunts in his sleep; a blissful reminder to Jeremy that he is _not_ alone. He refuses to _think_ about what the visibility – or mobility for that matter – would be if it would additionally be raining.

Eventually, he stops in the middle of the road when the wind perks up so badly that Jeremy is convinced he would be swept away were he outside of the car’s safety. He pulls the handbrake and tries to breathe. Outside of the headlights’ range, there is nothing else, only darkness and the road that goes on indefinitely, getting swallowed by it. There is, and has been, absolutely nobody else besides them this whole time.

Jeremy tightens his fingers around the wheel, mushing it under their coil. He is biting through his lower lip, trying to figure out what to do and if it’s the right thing to do. His gut is telling him a million different things at the same time and his brain is unsure which side to listen to.

His eyes interrupt the communication war and pull him back down to the real world. The trees are still maniacally swaying like skydancers in front of the malls, but it isn’t the attention-grabber however frightening and unbelievable it looks.

Something else is moving there.

Jeremy squints, searching the road within the headlights.

Darkness and raving trees are broken by something light, white and inexplicably calm approaching from out of the treeline farther down the road. Jeremy swallows, blinking the fatigue away. But the illusion doesn’t go away. Instead it’s growing and at first Jeremy can’t say what to make of it.

“What in the world…” is what he says instead.

The thing has been lengthy at first, peeking from out of the trees like a curious deer, but when it keeps growing in said length, Jeremy becomes more weirded out.

The white length crosses the road, the beginning of which Jeremy still can’t see no matter how much logic keeps screaming to him that everything must have its beginning and its end. But the end isn’t coming.

The beginning, however, rounds the tree on the other side and begins slowly, steadily approaching the car and Jeremy’s muscles stiffen in horror and his heart leaps down to his heels.

The beginning of the lengthy thing appears to be a horse skull. Or its top part, anyway. There is no lower jaw that Jeremy can see. The rest of the length consists of the neck, topped here and there by the hanging scruffs of dark hair. The neck, that’s all there is besides the skull, twisted and turned and broken in too many joints to count, all the way outside of the light range.

The skull nears the windshield in the same slow and careful manner Jeremy had been treating the road previously. Jeremy’s nasal breathing becomes frantic and he tries not to blink, feeling his hands and underarms slowly beginning to go numb.

Divided by the glass by only a few inches, the creature stops, observing Jeremy with its hollows for eyes. Despite impacts of air against the car and swooshes through the branches above them, Jeremy can still hear the horrifying sound of bones breaking as the joints crack.

The most frightening thing is that while the wind outside is rampaging everything in its rage, this thing is completely still. Even the tufts of hair don’t move with the wind. Like it doesn’t exist here to obey laws of nature.

Then it hits Jeremy.

The scent.

Cinnamon.

“Jeremy?”

It’s a surprise he doesn’t pull his neck with the speed he turns to face Richard. The younger man is still fatigued, but puzzled. He is facing Jeremy.

The oldest of the three swiftly looks back forward to keep an eye on the thing and point it out to Richard.

But there was nothing to point.

The horse-skull thing was gone. Completely gone, the entirety of its length, tens of meters of bendy neck. Like they never existed. 

Sitting in the middle of the road, in the car, while the storm is leafblowing its way over the Earth, Jeremy begins to wonder how out of the right mind has he already gone. He isn’t sure if it’s him breathing through his teeth or if he’s breathing at all. He only has a distinct feel of the steering wheel under his fingers and the view of a desolate, vacant road, slowly piling by twigs, leaves and branches.

“Mate.”

Richard’s hands are here, warm from where they have been hidden in the crooks of his armpits, and gently grasp Jeremy’s fingers, trying to pry them off the steering wheel. Sudden difference in temperature finally snaps Jeremy back and he remembers to breathe in deep.

“Are you alright? Jez, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

He looks over to his friend again. Richard, who is worried, who is wide-awake, who is careful, who is _there_. The warmth proves it as such.

Richard’s huge brown eyes blink at him. “Jeremy. Do you want to switch pla—”

“Out of here”, mumbles Jeremy under his breath what must’ve surely been a full, normal sentence. Ignoring Richard’s stutters, he lifts the handbrake and does a frantic, violent U-turn, car swerving for a reason other than wind before catching balance. “Back”, Jeremy says, and in his mind, that was a full sentence, too.

Richard has no way of protesting, or as a matter of fact, reaching through to him. Jeremy doesn’t listen. He is just as fixated on the road as he is completely absent-minded. In turn, Richard both does and doesn’t fear for their lives.

Eventually, they make it back to where they started and Jeremy does a quick booking of the nearest cheap motel, a question Richard, once again, cannot get an answer to.

James has slept through the whole ordeal, confused as to why he is being woken up and pushed towards a motel door. But he wordlessly sleeps through the rest of the night.

When the morning rolls up, the storm is no more and it’s James who is driving this time, commenting on complete chaos on the road with Richard, once again in the passenger seat. Jeremy, exhausted from a sleepless night, is catching up to it in the back.

In the evening, safe in a hotel, Richard says, “Good grief!”

Jeremy looks over, his sudden exclamation grabbing James’ attention as well.

The storm is being covered in the news on the telly and the breaking part is the accident. A tree had fallen in the middle of the road, crushing the car with a married couple, killing them instantly.

“Hang on a minute”, James points with a finger. “Isn’t that the same road we were driving on?”

Jeremy gulps down the need to vomit, hand shaky as he brings the tea to his lips. A warning. He has been warned. And he listened.

He listened to cinnamon.

Jeremy has another sleepless night.


	21. Eternity Train

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad choo-choo

“We three blokes from Amazon Prime”, sings James quietly, a bit out of tune, absently staring out the window — even as there really wasn’t much to see. “Surging through wasteland till end of time.”

Across the table in their vast coupe, Jeremy looks up over the edge of his glasses from where he’d been looking at the photograph of his children. Richard is sat across the broad Victorian bench, legs folded at the ankles, back pressed against Jeremy’s arm. He is writing something on paper with a black pen in messy handwriting. Funny how those two become imperative when phones die.

“Ohhh, when the clock strikes two in morn’, upon us cometh man with scorn-ful face, without a trace, without remorse, gone are people who follow him out the door towards the iron horse, one by one... Untiiil ‘tis only us three blokes from Amazon Prime.”

James gets no response whatsoever. The other two don’t grin, don’t chuckle, don’t take a piss, or tell him to shut up. Because why do that at a man who tells all the truth, and who has absolutely nothing else to do.

Neither of them even remembers where they were initially going. It’s been so long. Upon mutual recollection, neither of them could remember any peculiar detail about the train. It looked perfectly normal, no different than any other. The conductor is a tall, slender, rather unpleasant-looking man, tiny eyes hidden in the shadow of low, protruding forehead covered in an even denser shadow of a uniform cap. For the life of all three of them, the man looked like he hasn’t smiled once in his entire life; his jaw was set firmly and hands stoically crossed behind his back. His means of greeting was a grunt as he showed the three men to their coupe.

Making jokes about the bloke for some half an hour into the journey has been one of the last sensible things they had done together.

When a five-hour journey has extended into six, nobody really paid any attention to it. Sans Japanese, there is nothing uncommon for trains to depart and arrive late. When six became seven, people started to exit their coupes, asking each other questions.

One man when to the front to search for the conductor or any other train employee to ask what this was all about.

To this day, whichever it is, he hasn’t returned.

Slowly and steadily, the outside landscape changed into a barren, dry wasteland all the way to horizon. The grass is replaced by pebble and dust, bushes and trees gone. Sky has gained a sickly, dark colour with a shade of gut red. The sun — if the weak gleam colouring the clouds and hanging over the horizon is anything to go by — never sets, anywhere. The texture and colour of the sky don’t change.

“I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Frodo”, said James on the late morning of second day, according to his phone. All their phone batteries have died during the second day, and it was the last association with time they will ever have again.

From that day on, the conductor they had first seen would walk through their wagon and resume down the aisle into the following. Upon returning minutes later back towards the front, he would always have somebody with him. Gender, race, age, there was no pattern. The only consistency is a distant, blank expression on the person’s face. Emily had a sleep paralysis episode once, Jeremy thinks. That’s easily the closest he can relate the faces to.

Richard tried to reach the end of the train. He might have been away for hours, though it’s difficult to tell when there is absolutely nothing, not even the sky outside, to give you a rough estimation of time. Richard walked from one passenger car to another, but seemingly not going anywhere, even though the final wagon was only eight of them away. When he had finally given up and made to go back to his mates, he had only crossed two wagons before ending up where he first started, crashing into the arms of the other two and crying inconsolably, exhaustion and relief mixing with confusion and fright.

Jumping off is suicide, of course. In his professorial mode, James estimated it’s running at least 200 kilometers an hour. The landscape itself never changes its plain form, and even as this was somewhere familiar, they would have already ended up at the sea shore long ago. It’s become obvious by now, to all passengers and whatever their reaction, it isn’t going to change it — this train is going nowhere.

The train stops from time to time. The stops themselves are baren, open and vacant. Everybody learned not to step off. First time it happened, Richard almost jumped out to escape. Two young men beat him to it. In a manner of speaking, they saved Richard’s life, even as Richard would have never asked them to.

Not even a minute of their absence from the train, sprouting from behind the stone shelter and the ground come clusters of grabby, curled tentacles. They snatched them away, kicking and screaming and drag them away from the field of vision. Richard had just about pulled all the hair out of his hair and Jeremy had to physically restrain him from jumping off to save them as well.

Richard’s guilt trip had lessened a bit when James gently suggested him to write Mindy and the girls a letter. Which he is currently occupied with, thanking James for his swift mind.

The irony of all is that while the train is enveloped in some blurry sheet of horror, anything you asked for, you have gotten without a penny to pay. Exquisite food, drinks, delicacies, board games, radios, movies, the most expensive champagne in the world. All your heart desires — provided it’s small enough to fit in the train. And provided you are aware you are stuck there.

People don’t stop passing by every now and then, led by the conductor. One by one.

Around the same time, which when it first happened, James had looked on the phone and saw the digits displaying 2 a.m., there is a loud, thundering boom that shakes the wagons. Jeremy swiftly looks out of the window one time while the train curved on the widely bent tracks. He said he saw denser than normal black smoke rising from the smokebox.

Days have passed. Weeks. Maybe a whole month had already passed. The train is still going. The landscape still the same. The service still horrifically generous.

Then comes that day.

The sliding doors to their coupe slide open. The three men look up.

The stoic conductor with a half-shaded face is staring them all down. Then without a word, points at Jeremy and invites him over with folded fingers.

Jeremy swallows. Looks at the picture of his children one last time, puts it back into his wallet and, leaving it on the table slowly stands up.

But he isn’t the only one.

“Not alone”, refuses Richard, getting up on his feet and defiantly staring the man down. Across the table, James stands as well, facing the coupe door.

“We three blokes from Amazon Prime, sticking together till end of time”, James sings one last time.

Jeremy understood the resolution in his eyes. He makes sure gratitude is readable in his own. If there is really no way out… then, well… lesser of two evils.

But they are going together. As James says, ‘till end of time’. Which hopefully exists wherever they are going.

Richard fearlessly approaches the conductor, handing him the twice-folded piece of paper. “Could you see that my wife gets this? You have been pretty generous with your hospitality so far.”

The tall man faces him down, but Richard doesn’t relent. His only vengeance is the determination and fearlessness he can show this man who is at least one of the chain links leading to one chaotic mass that has ruined all their lives. Richard will not lend him the satisfaction of seeing how out of control he feels.

Seconds later, when it looked like neither of them will give in, the man slowly lifts a hand from behind the back, gently takes the letter in one gloved hand and carefully puts it in the front pocket of his uniform. There almost appears to be respect in the gesture with a dash of said hospitality.

That night, out of usual order, the train is shaken by three booms.


	22. Loud Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _How did it come to this?_

James tips the glass to his lips, savouring the most expensive wine from his collection, closing his eyes so that all sensory concentration goes to his tongue. He lets it spill over his tongue slowly, beautifully and his fingers tap on the desk in pleasure.

“Look at him”, he hears Jeremy’s voice from the laptop. It’s hoarse and hitched and held-back. Very. “Nothing changes him. Not even today.”

“Why should it?” grins James. “You know how they always go, ‘live every day like it’s your last’…” he sets the glass down gently. He can hands-down smash it against the wall for what difference it would make in a few minutes. But James is not a savage. James is a gentlemen all the way.

“Which we have”, quips Richard. He has some old trumpet music playing in the background, probably from his old gramophone. “ _God_ , we had good lives.”

“The only fault was meeting and being acquainted to you two”, says James, lifting the glass in a toast. “To us, and our great misfortune of coming to know each other.”

“Worst day of my life”, agrees Jeremy, lifting his beer. “I hate you both.”

“Hate you both, too, you fat goats”, cheers Richard, showing them his gin and they all drink to that.

Two seconds later, air raid sirens blare from the outside, ricocheting off buildings and echoing over them. They vary in pitch and length, but they all sweep in the same up and down wail. Time is up.

“Well, it’s been an honour, chaps”, sniffs Jeremy, trying his best for a genuine smile on his wet face. “My kids are waiting. See you on the other side.”

“See you there, brother”, James nods.

“I love you”, Jeremy loses control, frightened and emotionally drained, voice shivering. “I swear to God, I do.”

“We know”, James smiles. “Us, too. You.”

Richard just smiles. His eyes tell them everything. For once he doesn’t say anything.

James disconnects and closes the laptop lid. Sits there with fingers intertwined and thumbs orbiting around each other trying to remember if he had called everyone he had to.

Doesn’t matter. Time was up.

He walks out onto the porch to the louder air where Sarah is standing, looking. Simply looking. Wishing to memorize every bit of this world while it still existed.

James reaches her and turns her towards him, taking a gentle hold of her face, cupping it with his hands. He caresses stray hair strands out of her face with his thumbs. Surveys every nook and crane on her face.

Sarah looks him back equally gently, smiling and holding his wrists.

“I love your face”, she tells him quietly. And even over wailing sirens, James hears it.

He huffs a laugh through his nose. “Be quite sad if you didn’t.”

He’s hearing distant panic; the screaming, crashing and commotion, but it’s so, so far from this perfection. And James decides to focus entirely on it.

“Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not”, she says. Those brilliant green eyes. “I’m with you.”

He leans his forehead against hers and closes his eyes feeling tingles behind them and in his nose. First time in everything is the scariest thing you ever have to do. That first leap of faith. And James has never died before. Still, he could ask for no one else to do it with.

In their huge yard in front of the castle, Richard, Mindy and the girls are hugged into a tetrahedron. It was Izzy’s idea: ‘If I have to die, I don’t want to do it being squished among the walls of the house. Let’s go outside so we can be free.’

Richard doesn’t allow them to look. Whenever one of them lifts her head to search the sky, he gently pushes it back down ‘Will it hurt?’ Willow asks. ‘No, love’, he assures her, even as he himself has no farthest idea what they are about to face, but he promises for her. ‘You won’t feel a thing.’

Jeremy has all his children accounted for in his arms. Lisa is with her family. But Francie is here. Their children are here. Katya is crying silently and he does his best to have an arm that is holding her pressed to him feel as reassuring as possible. Buries his nose in Emily’s hair. Final lone tear escaping through the closed eyelid.

_How did it come to this?_

Light flashes brighter than the sun. The air vaporizes into heat and fire, peeling the skin and turning everything alive and not alive standing to dust in seconds.

The world disappears into oblivion without anyone to remember it.


	23. Frequencies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don’t know electroengineering or physics or anything. So I showed the original version to my uncle, who does. He read it and told me I wrote complete rubbish and explained to me how these things worked. Thanks to him, I am not as embarrassed as I would have been. Thanks, uncle!
> 
> Subtle 'When Day Breaks' reference.

Mock him through the bloody wall, James doesn’t care — he loves collecting old things.

Not big things. Ones where you have to empty your boot to stuff it with the purchase or which don’t fit in the car in the first place. Small trinkets; vintage metal plates, polaroid pictures, painting frames, old ashtrays, gramophone plates, pocket watches, old notebooks, books with golden spines, ornate mugs, cups, teapots, hand fans, bottle caps and tattered tin boxes. All of which make him happy just by being there looking retro and brilliantly detailed.

It’s his own built corner, in his home office and part of the garage, on the shelf. It’s a quiet, watchful company for when he is working on a motorcycle, glancing at his collection every now and then when he needs to rest his eyes.

On one sunny Saturday, he blissfully drives back home from one such vintage fare where he’s been fighting not to buy half of it. But in the end, he only comes out with an old radio which he immediately happily carries to his garage like a kid who’s just arrived home with a new toy.

He goes to mend it the same afternoon, humming cheerfully and changing batteries, removing the old batter ones and fitting in the fresh ones. It takes a tragically short amount of time through which he’d whistled the entirety of Mozart’s “ _Eine Kleine Nachtmusik_ ”. But eventually, it’s all functional and did up. So James stretches the slanted antenna out and turns it on.

The sound of static elicits a crisp “yes!” out of the older man and he begins turning the frequency wheel with vigour of an excited child.

He surfs through frequencies until it settles on Thurston Harris’ crackly, but jolly tune of _‘’Little Bitty Pretty One’’_. Finds his Phillips screwdriver turns in the rhythm with the tune and realizes that as long as this keeps going on like this, he is the happiest man in the world.

Would be happier with some Nyetimber, but let’s not be too spoiled.

All sense of ‘spoiling’ matter, however, is abruptly broken when the music cuts off to static just as suddenly.

With an annoyed ‘tsk’, he straightens up with a groan of the knees and sits at a table, trying to figure out what caused the disruption or attempting to get the needle to sit on another available station.

But no matter where he turns the wheel and where the red needle moves, the only thing he gets is static, with occasional unintelligible cough of the captured signal.

So James hatches a plan.

Certainly better than any of Clarkson’s.

He grabs a coaxical cable and rummages through his house like an ant through the tunnels, then carefully climbs the roof basked in sunset feeling like an older and fatter version of Brad Pitt in ‘’Once Upon A Time In Hollywood…’’ He attaches the cable clasps onto the house antenna and descends with even more caution, letting the remainder of the cable sway down the side of the house. Once back in the garage, thankful for the extensive length of the thing, he pulls the cable inside and carefully presses the main conductor to the radio antenna.

The static goes wild and increases in volume and a smile is back on James’ lips. He finds something to support the outer insulation so that the copper wire is still connected to the radio.

He experimentally spins the wheel on the side. This time, the range covers a lot more stations and James grins fully at his brilliance, settling the needle on some gentle music.

Up until this point, night has already fallen and the only light in the room is that of a lamp on the garage table. James fiddles with the toolbox, cleaning the tools, trying to think how he could keep the cable there without it looking this moronic and being protected from the rain.

Not soon into the music, he is interrupted again.

It’s static as well at first. But it isn’t a steady white noise anymore. It’s growing thicker and thinning out, feels like it’s swirling inside the huge speaker like a living thing.

James stops breathing when the signal is replaced by static-burned, distorted wailing. He isn’t sure if it’s a broken siren, an old piece of tech or an actual lunatic screaming.

Before he’s about to turn the switch off to spare his ears this horrid noise, the wailing gets cut off. It is replaced by mechanical screeching in steady gaps. This went on for about five seconds.

Then the static diminishes. It doesn’t go away. It retracts just enough for a male, autotuned voice to surge through the old speaker.

“An issued threat has been sent to interrupt the usual broadcast. This warning is effective immediately and will continue into the foreseeable future. Clearance has been given to issue this alert.”

James frowns, head dipping in so his ears could capture the voice more clearly. Simultaneously, his heart begins racing at the emergency-alert nature of this message.

The voice continues, methodically and flatly, “The following instructions are vital to your safety. Due to the meteorological fatality of cosmic origin, an estimated six and a half billion casualties will have been eradicated within the first twenty-four hours of exposure. The citizens are asked to remain indoors and block any transparent entrances and windows and not look outside.”

“What the…” breathes James. _Six and a half billion??_ That’s almost the entirety of the world. That’s more than most! Cosmic fatality? Just what is going on?

But then it registers, and makes James’ heart freeze. _Will have been eradicated_. Is this a warning for a nearing future event? He doesn’t get to delve on the question for long as the voice relentlessly keeps relaying.

“Citizens are advised to retreat into deepest levels underground. Do not exit the shelters unless absolutely necessary. Traveling in any way, shape, or form is heavily discouraged and strictly advised to be circumvented. Should an emergency occur, always wear protective clothing. Do not engage in contact with entities of unknown or known origin. No mATt _eR hOW hUmaN TH **eY mAy sEeM**_ **.** ”

James literally backs away in his chair away from the radio as the voice distorts, crumples, falls apart into geometrically linear pieces, meanders into horrifying depths and turns into something, low, threatening, and even more unnatural that it’s already been. Otherworldly.

“ ** _Euthanization is not to be attempted_** ”, says the monotone, utterly slow, lagging robotic voice. “ ** _Distress signals from unknown locations are to be disregarded. Refuse all requests from people trying to enter your household. They are not- - hUMaN- -_** ”

James pries the cable away, turns the radio off and throws the thing away so hard it ends up in the driveway, outside of the garage. He presses himself against the wall, rapidly breathing, trying in earnest to restrain terror building up in his chest.

BAE radiocom testing? Has the antenna actually manage to interfere with airforce communication? Radio station hacking? Kids playing pranks?

James stares at the discarded old device laying in the driveway in darkness, now silent. An initially friendly and exciting thing has just become ominous and baleful, all harmless-looking on the hard stone, looking like it hadn’t just spewed out what it did.

_What the bloody hell has he just heard?_

A soft sound of a lid is heard moving against the rest of the tiny ceramic bowl on the shelf, as if in a question.

“Shut up, you”, barks James in return.

He dumps the radio onto a local waste dump the next morning. But not before taking a large mallet and crushing the thing in a very Jeremy-like fashion.


	24. Entomophobia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **GRAPHIC VIOLENCE AND RAPE WARNING**
> 
> I guess at some point in their life every writer asks themselves, “What’s the worst, most inhumane thing I could write right now?”

Air is fresher here than in Herefordshire, Richard notes. So he takes a lungful of it, closing his eyes to have all alveoli expand to their limits before he was going to release the air he’s captured.

He looks up at the red-brick house he had called home when he was a child. Nostalgia hasn’t yet let up. Richard doesn’t think it ever will. Not in this life, anyway.

He reaches into the trouser pocket and fishes out the key he had secretly copied from his brother. Without his knowledge, of course. Sentimentality in Hammond household was always taken mockingly among the siblings.

The huge space is dim and dusty and old and quiet, but the nostalgia grows even larger, threatening to burst out of Richard’s chest.

He runs the bottom floor over, peering into the kitchen, the dining room, the sitting room and the living room, feeling more and more like a child the more rooms he rummages through. He digs around the old drawers, finds old photos they haven’t cleared out when the place became vacant, his father’s old notebooks, empty medicine boxes and old bills from the seventies. He also finds his mother’s trinkets, buried carelessly in the drawer either not wanting to be found or being left there accidentally, suffering their fate in eternal dark.

Richard begins his ascent up the creaky stairs that groan and complain at his every step. He passes his two brothers’ rooms in the hallway and walks straight into his own on the left.

He becomes an eight-year-old in a fifty-year-old body.

The small table, the bed, the comics collection, the car posters, matchbox cars lined up neatly on the shelf. Richard takes off the leather jacket, feeling heat of excitement quickly warming him up and throws it over the chair’s headrest, feeling warm fuzzing spread around his stomach when he recalls doing so a million times at coming back from school and doing the same.

He hears scraping somewhere in the room, assumes it’s the old house saying hello. Warm feeling doesn’t relent.

On another shelf are the books of old car magazines and nature-related encyclopaedias. He shuffles through one old catalogue, noting with amusement a trace of ketchup smudge on the Porsche page. It’s all wrinkled up, too, he thinks, grinning. Goes to show his love of those so early on.

Scraping again, more persistent. Demanding his attention.

He looks up.

Drops the magazine.

It’s crouching in the top right corner of the room like it’s trying its hardest not to be spotted, but because of the absurd size it has only silence to rely on, which it has patently intentionally broken. It has to be five times Richard’s length. Where the tergites are folded at places its body is twisted, the many long, thin arthropod legs are spread on the outer end and curled up together on the inner one. It’s black with red legs and all those pincers and long antennae, and it seems to Richard, that it truly has hundreds of those grotesque legs.

The pincers part, revealing a cavernous mouth, and out of them, crawls a dawdling, hoarse, hissy voice. “Hiiiiii, Richaarrrd… Little Richie… Who wanted to be on the telly… Look how _biiiig_ you’ve gotten… Look how much you’ve grown… You’re a _man_ now, proper man, yeeessss… It’s been so, so long… so long….”

Richard starts promptly shaking, all previous nostalgic warmth turning to ice. His breathing quickens and sweat begins pumping out of him profusely. All natural gifts for him to high-tail it out of there faster than he normally would — but utter terror and disbelief are grounding him against the floorboards like a rock.

The hiss comes again, effortlessly crushing the hope that he might be dreaming. “What’s the matter? You don’t remember me? Ohhhh, but we have been so close. Sssooo close… You slept on the bed and I below. I remember how you cried yourself to sleep. When you fell off your bicycle, when you would come home from school with a blue eye and firmly gritted teeth, promising retribution to all who’ve done this to you… I listened all from underneath… from underneeeaaaath… I heard it aaallll, all of your stories you never wanted anyone to know, all your stories of love and hate, all your deepest secrets and your darkest desires… We were sssoooo closeee, Richiiieeee… And the things we are going to do… the things. We are going. To dooooo…”

The entire time while it spoke, the animal began to move, unfolding, scraping and slithering across the wall with almost patient slowness, zigzagging until it reached the corner on the other side and began the slow descent until it touched the floor and continued slowly towards him until it came at two meters distance, then lifting the front of its body until it’s twice his size, with thin, grabby legs, wriggling them like a playful parent would, announcing the game of chase.

Richard’s breath is hitching and tears are already leaking down his cheeks. Staring at the nonexistent eyes of the stuff of worst nightmares as it continuously comes a shy away from him, wishing to touch him, with the legs, with the pincers, with antennae — but never actually touching him. There was something almost frightfully, morbidly reluctant about it.

“Don’t look surpriiiissseeeeed…. We both knew this day would come… when you’d finally come back to me. All those years apart… I was so lonely Richiiieee… So, so…. Do you have any idea how many nights I dreamt of you… Of us… I took care of you… I worshiped you, I skinned you, I gutted you open, your beautiful insides, finally exposed to the outside for me… I will do just that, Richiieeee… I will suck on your leg, your arm, your flesh… I will drink up all your blood, all your urine, all your seed… You will finally be… in me…”

As a long, thin tongue slithers out and twists towards him, something in Richard finally switches and he bolts like a horse poked with spurs. The creature makes for a snatch with huge front limbs like mantis claws, and thankfully misses.

But the chase doesn’t last long. Already in the hallway, just before he will reach the stairs Richard only has time to hear a fierce _tremolo_ of multiple feet on the floor before he is caught by one ankle and lifted into the air. Releasing an abrupt scream, he is turned upside-down and brought to face the creature that doesn’t look any better the other way around.

“Richiiieee…. Richieee….” It hisses a sigh in that soft, lustful tone again. “You know I love gaameesssss… But we both know this won’t go… You don’t get to hold the strings, Richie, you held them for faar tooo loonnnnggg… And now it’s right there…. Just within my grasp…”

The long tongue emerges again, coming against the crotch of his trousers and caressing it thoroughly, slowly, lustfully. Richard whines and squeezes his eyes shut, sending another wave of tears the opposite direction, towards his hair, wishing he could disappear into the floor. He wiggles one free leg, but it doesn’t do anything. The disgusting feeling of a wet slimy tongue massaging his cock through the protective layer of cloth is just made worse by the fact he was getting an erection and could do nothing, think of absolutely nothing to stop it.

The creature finally stops and makes an awful blend of a moan, a hiss and a sort of deep rattle, clattering its mouth pincers.

“Ohhh, yesssss… how I will enjoy thissss… The smell of it… I can only _imagine_ it tastes even better without all those false layers of cloth in the way… Unspoiled… You will be pure, Richie… and then you will be mine…”

Something wakes up in Richard again and he grits his teeth, forces a frustrated grunt through them and swings his free leg as hard as he can. It collides with a soft bit of the creature’s face and it lets out a pained screech, stiffening and curling its legs, dropping him in the process.

Without thinking of looking back, knowing he doesn’t have time, Richard half-runs, half-falls down the stairs, fishing out his phone and half-consciously typing something to the first person he sees in the messages.

He presses send by pure accident when he is toppled down to the hard floor from above, falling hard on his stomach. His phone slides off forward and he keeps eyes on it, attempting to crawl forward and clawing his hands on the dry parquet, eyes fixed on this small, glowy piece of salvation.

A pair of limbs slam down onto his palms with brute force, emitting a scream out of him; he hears and feels crunching and knows the bones are broken.

“Now, now…” purrs the creature sweetly, crawled halfway up his legs, pressing its body upon them. “What did we just say, hmmmm? Didn’t they teach you, Richhiiiiieeee? Didn’t they teach you hitting back isn’t the answer? When did that ever help? All your whilom bullies are dead Richie… Don’t want you to turn into one of them… do we? What use are you dead? There’s no fun if you end up deeaaadd…”

Then he feels utter terror when his pants are being pulled down along with his underwear, humid air hitting his bare bottom. He struggles, but his limbs are trapped and it does almost nothing. He gasps, sobs and emits pitiful frightened noises — like an animal caught in a trap.

“Yesssss…. Oh, beautiful… So, so enviously beautiful… Oh, Richie… You are a mural, a marble, a sight for sore eyeesssss….”

Richard hears the creature adjusting and half turns his head, nothing something huge, long, hard, throbbing and wet protruding from the lower region of the creature’s abdomen.

He begins buckling with renewed vigour, brisk panicked screams now coming out of him. He twists and wriggles and for his life, but he feels trapped like a butterfly nailed to the wall.

“Don’t worry… it will all be over soon… and you and I will finally be one… you in me… and I in _you_.”

Something hard pierces through his anus and sinks all the way through to his prostate. Richard shrieks his throat out. It was the loudest sound he had ever produced. It is so sick and desperate that its intonation meanders high and low like a paint brush being carelessly pulled across the canvas.

As he runs out of air to scream, the hard limb retracts a little before thrusting back in harder, bucking him forward violently and repeats the process over and over and over again.

The thrusts steadily gain speed and force, shoving him rhythmically against the hard floor and Richard’s screams, in contrast, become quieter and quieter until there is nothing left in him but thin, miserable whines and silent tears. He wishes, begs whatever force out there, desperate for it to stop, it hurts so much, but breaching of his most intimate bit of self comes more and more insistently each time. Pain relents after a while, or perhaps he just gets used to it. Something warm, thick and wet is pouring around the savage limb out of his anus and across his buttocks, leaking in sad floods onto the floor. 

At some point when he was being rutted ridiculously fast, forehead bumping into the floor with every jerk, the creature thrusts in so hard he thinks his sides are going to split and lets out a sick, clattering screech that carried so much lust and so much satisfaction that Richard just heaved and vomited all over the floor while at the same time feeling something thick and sticky filling him, flooding him all the way up.

Richard’s head just languishes facefirst into his own vomit, completely uncaring of anything. Everything lost its meaning. Nothing is important anymore. Nothing ever was.

The last thing he feels before everything disappears is the unbearable pressure finally leaving his inside.

* * *

In this changeable weather, Jeremy is shifting between enjoying the sun and grumbling about clouds. Never mind that his porch has a swing bench which is in constant shade and that these table chairs are hard and they still haven’t bought cushions for them.

Inbetween his mutterings, scrolling through Twitter and having something to say about every post, but only to the air and wind that make him company, the phone buzzes in his hands. It’s a message. Not WhatsApp, not messenger, not Twitter. A real SMS.

It’s from Richard. 

He crooks his eyebrow at the two words.

**DONKEY**

**PEP**

Jeremy instinctively scoffs, but the part that keeps him from laughing is this other word. Or, what it possibly should have been.

He tries dialling Richard just to make sure, but doesn’t get an answer. He attempts it several times and the outgoing beeping is the only response every time.

He is already up and entering the house, grabbing the jacket. “Lisa! I have to go, something’s popped up.”

Without waiting for a response, Jeremy jumps from the porch, phone pressed to his ear again, this time a different number.

“Hello?”

“Mindy, hey. Is Richard with you?”

“No. He said he was going to go for a long ride. You know, one of those days.” She pauses, and Jeremy can hear puzzlement when she speaks next. “Why, what’s wrong?”

“Do you know where he went?” tries Jeremy, unable to stop the briskness and urgency from exploding out of him.

“I- no, he didn’t say. He just said ‘long drive’. It usually means he wants a day for himself. You know, open road and his bike. I didn’t think anything of it. Why, Jeremy? Is everything alright?”

“I’ll call you back”, he promises and hangs up before she can say anything else, deciding not to worry her until he knew for sure what is going on. Mid-walk, he is already dialling another number with just a few taps.

“What?”

“May. I’m coming to get you.”

“What? Why? What did I do?”

“Nothing, you idiot, just shut up and listen”, he cuts James off, sitting into his car and pulling off before he had properly put the seatbelt. “I think something’s happened to Richard. I just received a text from him. It said ‘donkey’ and ‘pep’.”

There’s a stunned silence on the other end and Jeremy can see James arching an eyebrow. “Is he drunk again?”

“In early afternoon? You and I both know he isn’t. I tried calling him multiple times and he isn’t responding.”

“Maybe one of his girls decided to prank you while he’s in the shower.”

“No, James, be serious, please”, Jeremy barks, annoyed in rapidly ascending worry, speeding down the curvy roads. “I just got off the phone with Mindy, she says she doesn’t know where he went, either. He drove off on his motorcycle this morning without telling where he was going”, he pauses, biting his lip. “Remember when we agreed on the safeword? And we said we will never use the word ‘pepper’ unless real shit went down and we were in danger or needed help?”

“Yes, but it was years ago”, muses James. “You think he was trying to send an SOS?”

“Look, we practically made an oath not to mess with that thing. And why would he write ‘donkey’ without properly writing the safeword first? If he is playing a joke, I’ll just kill him, but… I don’t want to take chances, James. I don’t.”

“You think his donkey is sick or something?”

“He never even _mentioned_ his donkey, why would he do that now?”

There’s a silence on the other end. Jeremy can hear James’ brain cells jumbling.

“James, what do you have?”

“You know which donkey he _did_ mention?” James says carefully. “You know that story he told us once how when he was little he lived next to a field that had a donkey on it? So one day he woke up and saw a giant sinkhole and was scared about what happened to that donkey?”

“Yeah. Yeah I do. We all laughed about it”, Jeremy pauses, suddenly breaking and barely missing a car going across. Cursing under his breath, he takes a turn, shaking his head to clear it out.

“James if you’re right — if that message means what you think it does, then he’s in…”

“Ripon”, finishes James. Jeremy hears scraping and rhythmic thumps on the other side of the line. “He’s gone back to his childhood home.”

“Be at your place in twenty”, Jeremy says and hangs up.

* * *

They pull up in front of a huge red-brick house abandoned for decades. Jeremy carelessly parks the car halfway up the curb right behind Richard’s bike, gently tipped over on the foot stand, and they jog over to the door. James’s suspicion is confirmed when they find them unlocked.

With a racing heart, Jeremy enters first and walks through the small lobby and into the main area.

What he sees almost makes him faint.

Richard’s half-naked body lays limply on the floor, his pants crumpled around his ankles and blood poured out of his anus. It was all over his arse cheeks and his thighs and lower back and the floor. His palms are weirdly positioned parallel to each other on either side of Richard’s head and his face is sunk into a puddle of dried vomit.

“Rich… oh… Richard… oh, Christ almighty…”

Jeremy reaches him first and carefully wraps his arms around his chest in an attempt to turn him around. This startles Richard awake with a frightened falsetto scream so filled with terror and dread that Jeremy nearly drops him out of fright.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s me. Hey”, he brushes sweaty hair from Richard’s face and sliding one large palm down the no less wet face, full of sweat, tears, sick, snot and dirt. “Oh, Richard… Fuck…”

Richard struggles for another minute, emitting pathetic whimpers, staring straight through Jeremy before a glimmer of recognition finally makes him go limp and completely quiet down.

James doesn’t speak until he gets there and he half takes Richard’s limp body, too and the pair share him between each other, handling him gently and carefully like he might fall apart at any moment. And that wasn’t a metaphor.

“Clean him up”, mumbles James and it’s just a verbal push to himself to do something. So he fishes out a flannel and soaks it up with small bottle of water he brought. He proceeds to gently clean filth and sweat off Richard’s face, revealing deathly pale-green skin and tireless sweat glands that mix their still excreting content with cool water.

“No, the red one”, Jeremy is saying into the phone, still propping Richard’s shaking body up with one arm. “Yes, the red brick house. That’s right. And hurry up. I don’t think he’s bleeding anymore, but he’s lost a lot of it.”

Richard’s eyes dully stare ahead and, once satisfied he’s restored as much dignity he could to his friend, even as it was momentarily relevant for shite, James drops the flannel to the floor, getting a firmer hold of his friend. He watches his eyes, searches for his gaze, but Richard is completely blank, an empty hourglass.

Jeremy plants soft kisses on his forehead, cheek, temple and hair that he can reach, uncaring of the salty taste of sweat and bitterness of leftover vomit. He is muttering ‘it’s going to be okay’s whenever his lips aren’t busy. Richard feels them on his skin and tries to nod his head into them, the gentleness he is being handled with in complete contrast to the furthest of all expectations. James’ hand is soft and warm as it caresses his hair back, his breaths comforting as they exhale through his nose resting against his other temple. He doesn't speak, but he is indisputably there.

Richard, entangled in this warm knot of the two men, hearing familiar sounds of wailing sirens in the distance, accepts this state of mire and allows himself to give in to unconsciousness, darkest pits of his mind falling to cajoling silence.

* * *

Something died in Richard that day. It’s been months and he still hasn’t uttered a word. Hasn’t smiled once. Whatever happened in that house will likely never be brought to light.

He barely sleeps because he refuses to fall asleep. And when he cannot help himself, when he succumbs to his body’s needs, he wakes up screaming and trashing ten minutes later. But never speaks. Never tells anyone anything.

Something died that day, in that house. And in a higher sense, it might’ve been Richard.


	25. Hydrophone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hydroacoustics AU. Boys are bioacoustics scientists of Oceanographic Observatory in a station situated in Antarctica. One day, their sensors pick up an anomaly. Light read with a soppy beginning.
> 
> I quite like this AU if I’m honest.

James was fighting long and hard. He really was. He’s been fighting the entire afternoon.

But ultimately, his strength betrays him.

He inhales and releases a massive sneeze. More of a scream, actually, fuelled by the frustration. Oh, how blissfully relieving. The man sullenly sniffs, wrapping himself deeper into a thick blanket as the world turns from relieved ecstasy back to the grey curtain of reality. “Bloody cold”, he complains, pulling the blanket edges closer to himself. “Cold everywhere. Cold in control room, cold in the lab, cold in the kitchen, cold in the bathroom, cold in the bed — everywhere is bloody cold.”

Cue Jeremy entering the room humming with technology and handling two mugs of tea. Unlike James, he is sporting a beaming smile.

“There has never been, nor will it ever be, a more suitable man in his area of expertise working in a less suitable environment than you.”

“Well, I should’ve taken that into consideration before goggling at the number of zeros the contract had to offer”, James grumbles, gently blowing on the surface of the steaming beverage. “All a trap. Pricks.”

Jeremy chuckles and leaves his mug at the safe distance from the keyboards and computer cases before sliding both forearms over the other man’s shoulders as the younger man took a sip of his tea. He rests his chin on top of James’ head, happily burying his nose into the fluff of the earflap hat.

“Bugger off.”

“I’m warming you up.”

“Jeremy.”

“You’re going to have to put up with me for two more months anyway, until storms are over. The way I see it, you can either do it when you’re warm and contended or cold and grouchy.”

“There’s the third option, too”, suggests James, tipping his head sideways a little.

“Mm. And what is that?”

“I kill you and eat your remains.”

“Do you two need some time alone?” the third voice joins them. Judging by the sound of it, he has a toothbrush hooked in his mouth as well as a decent amount of foam.

“Shut up, rectum”, hisses James in quick succession.

“Maggie May is grouchy and cold”, sighs Jeremy, still happily half-wrapped around James, warming his nose in his hat. “Found him just sitting here all alone without his tea.”

“It still amazes me how he is capable of sporting so many layers and still complain”, mumbles Richard around a toothbrush before walking briskly over to the sink in the room and spitting into it.

“Richard Hammond you do not spit toothpaste in a disinfectant sink”, James’ raised, sharp scolding is drowned out by the hissing of water.

“I don’t see biohazard alert so have a nice evening”, Richard flips him a finger and gets a V in return.

It isn’t until Richard’s steps fade to the other side of the station where the kitchen area is that Jeremy speaks up again. “James.”

“Hmm?”

“Tell me where you want to go”, Jeremy murmurs into the top of his head.

“What?” James is pensively finger-tapping the soft material of Jeremy’s sleeve jumper staring at the red and blue dots on the ocean map on the computer screen.

“In two months when the plane comes to get us… I mean I know it’ll be October, but… I don’t know, maybe it helps.”

“Definitely somewhere hot and beachy”, James nods, agreeing with himself. “Samoa, Málaga, Canary Islands, Cyprus, Bali, Maldives, Sao Paulo…” his lips edge up to a slight smile in his dreamy trance. “Home doesn’t sound bad, either.”

Jeremy tightens his arms around him in a bear hug from behind. He knows his friend doesn’t usually like it, but Jeremy feels he needs it. “Well you’ll definitely be able to afford it. Come on, Maggie May. World isn’t all that cold. Let me see your happy face.”

To Jeremy’s delight, he actually manages to wheedle a chuckle out of James.

“And besides”, Richard says upon his return, a mug of tea of his own replacing the toothbrush in his hand. “The only reason you are cold is because you’ve been sitting here all day. Look at me. You see me complain?”

The youngest of the three sits in a chair next to the blanketful of James, dressed in a thermal long-sleeved pajama set, amusement and something else glimmering in huge dark eyes. His hair is capriciously tousled, but a bashful traitorous flush creeping up his neck still.

“That’s a bit hypocritical of you, Hamster”, James notes with a raised eyebrow. “Or are you going to deny to me that you two have been playing Gin Rummy and God knows what else _while_ drinking gin the whole afternoon before you decided to come bother me.”

“Yes, but we were there talking and laughing, and you are here all alone and miserable”, reasons Jeremy.

“I’m not miserable. At least I can say that I work.”

“We’ve done the work, May, there’s nothing to report. We’ve converted the files, labelled data and archived everything for today, I honestly don’t know why you’re sitting here other than to sulk.”

Hypocritically indeed, Richard shudders with stalking cold, scooting over on chair with wheels to press against James and the warm blanket he had adorned, so the three were, essentially, a comparison Jeremy would make from time to time, huddled like emperor penguins. Those didn’t have generators, just each other.

“Told you”, gloats James.

“Shouldn’t generators be directing heating to all rooms of the station equally?” Richard decides to ask instead of gracing James with a response.

“It’s only colder here because James has been here all day.”

“Oh, that’s why the toilet seat is always freezing even if he’s been the first one up.”

“And why coffee is tepid despite only just having been made.”

Indeed feeling much warmer, James was starting to relax, drowning out the banter in favour of sighing contently, taking a sip of his tea and surrounded by a pair of loveable pillocks. They drove him crazy every day. But he would take eternity spent in this place with only them than one day alone. All submitted to research in recluse stations such as this one had to undergo a three-day-isolation test. Easily the worst experience James most definitely doesn’t wish to repeat. Three days with just himself is not in man’s nature.

Something pushes and presses against James’ mind, then, through the calmness of the tea and ease of friendly paltering. Insistent and irritating, it jabs for James’ attention and he opens his eyes which immediately lay on the computer screen.

One of the red dots miles off the northwest coast is pulsing in steady blinks.

James pushes forward, swaying his free hand at Jeremy’s arms until the older man released him and Richard straightened back with a querying silence and James had used it to speak up, rarely as he had a chance to when they started their thing.

“Shut up, you two, we have something.”

Jeremy, unsurprisingly, scoffs. “It’s probably a leopard seal chasing a penguin again, come on, James. They’re making ruckus underwater all the time.”

“We’ve isolated those sounds, we don’t even receive them anymore unless they get really close”, corrects James automatically, shoving the reading glasses on and searching to pinpoint the beeping hydrophone. He blinks. “And besides… it isn’t a leopard seal.”

“How do you know?”

“Because this one is miles from shore, and I’m talking more than double digits”, with a few more clicks, James is able to pull up live recording and he shoves the headset onto his ears.

A familiar, gentle hum of the sea greets him at first, produced through the sensitive underwater microphone to capture frequencies in a way you wouldn’t have heard underwater, despite sound traveling faster either way.

Pasted across it is a collection of noises that isn’t meant to be in the ocean. In other words, in the entirety of his career as a scientist, James knew there were categories Mother Nature had bits of itself sorted out in specific boxes. These boxes do not interfere with each other. That’s a scientific law. Physical, biochemical law.

In irregular patterns, it demonstrates a series of whistles in various pitches, clicks, bumps like wood hitting wood, a sound similar to human questioned ‘ _hmm?_ ’, trembles, clatters, something akin to wind howling through metal drain pipe, an eerily computerized rattling that sounds like an error, and a low, descending drone.

It’s not ice-cracking, it isn’t any species of whale and it isn’t hydrothermal vent; all those are well embedded in May’s brain in many variations they sport.

James snaps his fingers and motions for Jeremy with a crooking index finger without looking away from the blinking dot, taking the headset off. Jeremy’s head immediately appears by his and he inverts one headphone outwards so he could listen, James still having the other pressed against his ear.

Even Richard has fallen silent now, and watches in silent anticipation as Jeremy’s eyes inch left and right slightly, but a frown carves his forehead and Richard shudders for reasons that have nothing to do with cold.

“Hammond. Take a listen, he’s serious.”

Richard reaches for a headset of his own and puts it on. The smaller man immediately goes still; not something that is typical for his nature. The irregularity of the patterns increases by the fact that they never repeat, at least not exactly the same. Each cluster of sounds between short breaks of just the gurgling sea is unique in its own way.

“Well that’s a first”, he concludes eventually.

“A submarine?” asks Jeremy.

“No, submarines are higher in pitch with more consistency. This is random. This is behaving.”

Hammond rolls in his chair to his computer and trills a series of commands to get a graphic image of the hydrophone recording, glasses shoved on nose somewhere along the way. “And besides. Submarines never go this close. At least none that we are aware of.”

“Rogue submarine, then?” asks Jeremy.

“I told you, they don’t make these kinds of noises. If you happen to listen at the same time they are miles away, you get an earrape.”

“Iceberg?” suggests James.

“Icebergs don’t whistle, James.”

“Maybe it’s knocked another hydrophone.”

“No idea. Can you pull out sonar image?” Richard throws quickly, eyes professionally on screen.

“On it”, Jeremy types instructions into the keyboard of his own.

Risking a quick glance at his colleague, James teases with a smirk, “No work, eh, Clarkson?”

Jeremy slides him a look with a smile that is almost apologetic.

“How far is it?” asks James the other way instead.

“Taken in consideration how sound underwater travels 1500 meters per second in contrary to air’s 340… times 3.6…” Richard observes the displayed decibels and his swift brain does quick maths in his head, and during his neurotransmitting venture he sports this adorable pout that James never gets tired of seeing. “1700 miles, give or take.”

“Are you sure?” splutters James in disbelief.

“Yes.”

“Because this is loud. Whatever this is it should either be closer to us than this, or it’s mammothally big.”

“Oh, bloody hell”, whispers Jeremy, attracting attention of the other two. The oldest of the three is furiously typing in a way a seventies kid will twist controls for _Flipper_ after losing the ball to the pit.

“Jeremy”, says Richard, and it’s a nudge and a question at the same time.

“It’s- -” Jeremy frustratingly sniffs. “What is the next closest hydrophone northwest?”

“H-038”, reads James from his monitor.

Jeremy quickly types, cursing at typos and hurriedly presses enter. “There!”

He points at the screen where the spinning line is covering a green circle surrounded by numbers. As the vector passes a full circle there’s a soft _bing_ that uncovers a dot near the centre. The line does another circle and the dot is much farther, towards the edge of the circle.

“That is terrifyingly fast”, breathes Jeremy.

“Richard’s right. It definitely isn’t a submarine”, nods James.

“Trajectory?” demands Richard.

Jeremy punches the codes. “If it continues this straight… Tiera del Fuego, Chile.”

“What is the closest research station?”

“INTA Ushuaia”, says Jeremy, surveying the map and its pinpoints.

Richard was already pulling the call through the headset.

In the meantime James was following the thing via headset. Not a torpedo. They don’t go that fast. Or make these noises. Old, colossal groans and deep trembling are still everpresent in this sequence of sound variety. James’ logically and mathematically navigated brain is a little frustrated with this confusion. He is vaguely registering Richard’s statistician voice rambling into the headset mic.

“This is Station B-218, ANT-base 73°41’20’’ South, 18°50’52’’ West, I hope you read, you have an incoming… thing… approaching fast, it’s about twelve hundred kilometres away from you and closing in.”

A moment of static. The other two look over from their tracking, momentarily captured in the same sphere of suspense as Richard.

“I repeat, do you read?” Richard tries again.

More silence.

Then finally, a break in the line and an almost bored sounding male voice in a heavy Spanish accent sounds off from the other end.

“This is INTA Ushuaia, I read.”

“You have incoming object coming straight at you and closing in fast. Seven hundred kilometres”, Richard repeats, keeping an eye on the reducing numbers on the screen.

“What is the nature of this object?” The man’s voice gives Richard the impression the man is mid-post-nap-stretch. It’s only a four-hour difference in time zones. Were it not for possible urgency of the matter, he would feel amused.

“Unknown. Do you have radars at hand? Oh, Jesus Christ, five hundred kilometres.”

There is a deep sigh and then instructions directed in Spanish. All of it is moving a bit slow for Richard, who is rattling fingers against the edge of the table in impatience.

“Yes, we are getting some signal”, the man finally says.

“Can you identify it? We are lacking equipment. We only know it’s deadly fast. Three hundred kilometres.”

The sound of the keyboard is unmistakable on the other side, and the Chileans definitely sound more awake. The happenings become lively on the other side. Arguments and commands are being struck.

“ _Que mierda…_ ” mumbles the man and Richard nervously watches the furious digits drop to two hundred, relentlessly keeping pace.

“Do you have visual?” Richard asks him, prompted by Jeremy.

“Hammond…” James mutters as his eyes grow at the raising sound filling the headphones, but the younger man doesn’t pick him up. He is fixed on the man on the line and his growing distress.

“That isn’t… Uh, we _should_ have them. We have cameras, sensors, but… something is blocking it.”

As Richard is about to mouth, the voices in the background grow. They turn alarmed and rushed. The alarm turns to straight out shouting when the line is shaken by microphone-tearing rumbling.

“What was that?” Richard’s voice almost shivers as he watches the numbers of kilometres drop below one hundred.

“Hammond”, tries James again, cringing now, hands half raised, ready to tear off the headset at the unnatural noises.

But the Chilean speaks again, concentrated in his frustration. “Friend, I would tell you earthquake, but I know what an earthquake is and this wasn’t it.”

“Hammond, it’s practically there”, Richard half-hears Jeremy from his seat.

A faint, but sharp and acrid sound reaches the youngest man’s ears and everything seems to go still on the other side.

“Hello? What’s going on? Do you have visual?” Richard tries, fingertips lightly resting on the headphone, pressing it in. It’s suddenly electrically, deathly silent on both ends.

Then the man’s voice drops to almost a whisper as the final transition reaches all three men in Antarctic.

“ _Dios, ay_ _ú_ _danos_.”

An eardrum-tearing blare blasts through their headsets and they tear them off their heads with pained screams, covering their ears. Through ringing of recovery, all three listen in horror as the faintness of the headphones erupts with hysterical voices of men and something else, roaring and wailing in frequencies the tech can’t even capture.

Then complete silence.

The headsets died out.

Panting heavily above still soft hum of the tech and generator power surging softly through the station, Richard blindly reaches out to grasp James’ hand.

“Good grief”, winces James, cringing at the still echoing sounds in his ears and taking a shaky hold of Jeremy's shoulder.

They stand like that for a while, grasping each other for leverage, for some sense of safety.

Then havoc breaks out as the calls are being made. To Oceanographic Observatory main office, to the Research Base in England and to Chilean Embassy. 


	26. The World Is Just Enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I’ll love you all your life,_  
>  _Although that may not be too long”_ – Sheldon Allman, “Crawl Out Through The Fallout” (1960.)

Napalm.

Air here has a scent of napalm to it.

He’s been cracking his head open with it since the very start. How breathable air is thickened by acidic and bitter quality. And that is half of sensation he is getting every day. He hasn’t seen the real sun in weeks. 

James has forgotten what wine tastes like. Forgot the sound of water in his ears, the swish of wind in the trees, the feel of cold because it is always, always unbearably humid here, the scent of fresh soap and leather of a waist-high supercar. The sound of car engine is still lingering there, in his mind and he’s linking each car to its specific sound. James likes to think it’s what saved his sanity. Other than the other two. And now just Richard.

It’s been almost two weeks since they’ve lost Jeremy. One second of deconcentration and one of those larvae things got to him. Crawled into him; James can still see it bulging beneath his skin.

The look in Jeremy’s eyes while he was pleading for Richard to kill him. James is on one hand utterly glad he wasn’t on the other side of that pleading gaze.

He was also pretty sure he wouldn’t have had the strength to jab the improvised blade so precisely under the lowest rib on the left side of Jeremy’s chest. But in terms of suffering, it was nothing compared to being eaten alive from the inside.

Regardless, James knows Richard will never forgive himself as long as he lives, much less come back to his old self. Even older one, before all this.

The only sane thing in their miserable existence were fire and a small radio. The one where you spin the small wheel to adjust frequencies and volume. Another mystery James simply didn’t have energy to ponder about, but had enough of sadistic, looming boredom to ponder how frequencies were even being captured in this place. To be captured where, in this wasteland?

He decides to replace perplexity with appreciation and hums every afternoon when they wake up exhausted from far too few hours of sleep. He hums Louis Prima’s “ _Living In A Great Big Way_ ”, Skeeter Davis’ “ _The End Of The World_ ”, Ink Spots, Milton Brown, Bob Crosby, Nat King Cole, Betty Hutton… all tunes just as consoling as they are ironic.

On this day, James can’t tell which, they are all the same, the music is gentle, slow and instrumental. Billie Holiday’s “ _Easy Living_ ” comes out in a beat that makes James gently sway his head, trying to ignore the unbearable pressure and humidity.

Hammond is sitting left, to the other wall of the shelter hands intertwined resting against his mouth, elbows on knees staring emptily into the fire. His blinks are occasional and heavy and bags under his eyes lined profoundly and shaded deeply. He is always rocking back and forth slightly, always thinking.

James decides to put a stop to it. At least for a little bit.

He stands up, standing in front of Richard, blocking his view of fire. The younger man blinks, looking up. James gently untangles his fingers, but doesn’t let go. He shifts his hold on Richard’s fingers and pulls him up to his feet.

Richard becomes only mildly surprised and confused when James dips into the slow rhythm of music. Leading their matched hands in a spinning kind of motion akin to pedalling the bike, beginning to form steps in favour of the same rhythm, eyes never leaving his friend’s.

Richard reacts very shallowly; something that, ages before in some other world where they were three blokes chasing each other in cars that James is forgetting more and more every day, he would more vivaciously express.

“Have you gone completely mad?” he says gently, but doesn’t shake James off.

James shrugs and gently shakes his head. “Maybe I have. There’s no one to judge me but you, and you know I don’t give a shit about your opinion.”

A slight nostalgic feeling of delight hits him when the edge of Richard’s lips curls into the smallest indication of a smile. James takes it as it is and offers the best smile he can in return.

Neither of them can dance, and it’s clumsy and embarrassing, but they don’t even notice. Their movements are turning less stiff and smiles appear, and it’s an odd feeling because they haven’t stretched the said grimace in weeks. James spins him around one hand and Richard’s teeth flash in half-dark, still somehow unfairly, godly white and James is so close yet so far from strangling him for it.

Through minutes of bliss navigated by the soft music, their little shelter becomes a pleasantly warm lounge, a cosy bar, a cottage with a fireplace, and the bubble of light and innocence and beatific stupor surrounds them until there is nothing but them and music and dumb, clumsy, but relaxed movements.

In the end, they spin around each other stupidly like a cringeworthy high-school couple, arms wrapped around one another and they are giggling idiotically until the music fades to the background and their spinning just becomes slow, synchronized shifting from foot to foot until even that fades away and their highlighted expressions drop back to reality with it.

Slowly, Richard backs his head away, arms lightly capturing James’ elbows and feeling his warm palms around his own back. James can see longing and sadness that will never be satiated as well as incessant affection, dim from Richard’s gnawing demons, but there all the same.

“Are you going to stab me now?” James whispers. It’s a stated joke, but James says it with so much seriousness that Richard realizes that is exactly what he is. They have been changed, all of them. James, coldly composed, not any less.

Richard takes hold of the sides of his head and tips it forward, down, propping himself up so he can plant a lingering kiss between James’ soft eyebrows, chin dipped into the crook of James’ nose almost perfectly. His lips are chapped and there isn’t much but sandpaper feel of empty dryness to it, but James takes it all just for the gesture. Just to feel a bit more human.

Richard backs away just as slowly to watch James’ eyes with a sort of gaze that said he knew there isn’t guarantee he would be seeing them for much longer. But then his eyes turn the same dull, empty, lightless way as they have been before. His hands slide down James’ shoulders and upper arms before the touch leaves James altogether, one by one hand as Richard turns around and goes back to where he has been, sitting down and assume the previous position, keeping watch over the fire.

Daylight has completely died out by now. The caterwauls, screeches, howls and wails steadily emerge, growing louder and broader and wilder, as diverse and terrifying as spider species.

James meets Richard’s eyes and with soft sighs, they rise up to their feet, beginning the preparations.

Time to survive another night.


	27. Big Charlie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Inspired](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/83/48/8b/83488b5a60c51a2dc2a2c4f0505abae8.jpg) by Trevor Henderson ©

Legends are usually passed on from generations upon generations of story-hungry individuals. They spread so fast because of a special virus embodied in all of humanity — curiosity. And the reason they stick around for so long is that they combine the existence of bizarre entities with the unknown, and so the myth is born. 

As science became more complex and began to make everything fundamental, these stories slowly fell into Lethe. They aren’t talked about anymore.

But sometimes new myths and legends are created. Even so, only stories will never be enough these days when the existence of hard evidence of flying saucers is laughed upon. There has become a lingering need for witnesses.

So. Relaying from similar collected sources.

He was born in a meat processing plant. Escaped for his life, if life is what you can call this staggering ruin of flesh and pained howls. He has the head of a newly born chicken, unclear foggy bulging eyes and body of a skinned emaciated lamb, with back legs much too shorter in contrast to the front ones. He walks wobbly and uncertainly, like a newborn, and is about the size of an elephant.

They named him Big Charlie.

He has been sighted all across British Isles. Those who have seen him claim his wails are impossibly painful to hear. They drill into your skull and haunt your dreams at night. The usual beautification.

There was also a catch. The part where in retelling stories people start with “legend says that...”.

It says that whoever dares to put him out of his misery, his curse will fall upon whoever had killed him, having them suffer the same fate until the same is done to them. And so the wheel turns.

But those are all just speculations, of course.

Of course, thinks Jeremy, watching with mildly open mouth a huge red-pink thing stumble across the foggy road on bony thin legs, flesh hanging off the skeletal body in strings. Even though the barrier of closed windows Jeremy can hear the creature like it’s on the stereo on full blast. It’s swaying in pain with pathetic, martyrdom wails and high-pitched moans emerging from the huge beaked mouth.

It doesn’t even see them. Jeremy is first so he has the best view. He also sees the flesh at the bottom of forked feet turning red from biting salt sprinkled on the road. From radio silence, Jeremy can only assume the other two are in much the same state as himself.

The lamb/chicken stumbles to the other side of the deserted road; the groans and caterwauls boom the other way, not directly hitting them in any way anymore, but they are still so achingly loud. Jeremy realizes his heart and stomach have compressed painfully in tune. He stumbles into the field of tall grass now covered in white duvet, spreading curvy bloody traces of salt-gnawed flesh behind him.

At times it seems that this next step will be his last and he will finally fall over sideways into the snow, causing a boom of an earthquake with his heavy body, but it never happens. Like some unfair, morbid version of Tantalus, forced to walk the Earth until his feet bleed, and keep walking, so transfixed on his suffering he doesn’t even realize there is a way out in transcending the said suffering on another living thing.

Jeremy realizes he probably wouldn’t have, either.

They don’t say anything. Just keep driving. Only, one glance exchange later, they admit all the rumours and transfer them into a different brain drawer.


	28. Butcher Pete

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roy Brown – “Butcher Pete” (1950.)
> 
> I can't believe I wrote this with a fever. Might be shit because of it.

_Butcher Pete’s got a long, sharp knife  
He starts choppin’ and don’t know when to stop  
All you fellas gotta watch your wives  
‘Cause Pete don’t care whose meat he chops_

Cold feeling under his nose caused by swooshes of air hitting him at this running pace might be blood, or sweat, or snot. James decides to focus on that. He decides to speculate without touching it to see. It’s weird how he is even able to produce moisture given that he’s considered himself gone completely dehydrated days ago. No water was ever given, nothing was given. Tears are the only things that flowed.

Upon rising of the gate, so did blood.

Entering it so cautiously, huddled in a group full of strangers, felt so surreal. Like pigs for slaughter in a morbid game of chase.

The place is enormous. Comparing it to their previous captive spot would be completely pointless.

They couldn’t breathe at first. The smell of body odour, urine and faecal matter was replaced by the stuffing smell of rotten flesh and blood, but it still makes them retch and vomit. However, it quickly becomes clear that is the bottomest of their concerns. 

Sticking together seemed like a smart idea at first so they applied it. There was between twenty and thirty of them, having no idea what is going on. Disoriented, starving and thirsty.

The answer would come few twists and turns later down dimly-lit steel corridors that would fit an elephant for accurate dimension disposal. When Richard says he feels like an ant, Jeremy is too exhausted to make a joke. The silence of the suffocating space is shattered by sudden loud music. They almost jump out of their skin. On every corner of this giant knot of blood-smeared steel hallways, there are speakers crackling and croaking.

_He's hackin' and wackin' and smackin'  
He's hackin' and wackin' and smackin'  
He's hackin' and wackin' and smackin'  
He just hacks, wacks, choppin' that meat_

Jeremy doesn’t get to utter a “what the hell” when it’s followed by ground-shaking thundering in regular patterns.

At first, James refused to recognize them as footfalls.

Until a few corners later they see him, just there about fifty meters ahead.

Suddenly, the huge dimensions of the blood-stained maze make perfect sense.

It’s obvious that no fragment of this thing has ever meant to be stealthy. It – _he_ – is meant to stand out. He is the spotlight. He is the answer to all their questions.

He and that cleaver knife in his meaty right hand.

He is about five times bigger than James and equally wide. He is so obese that the skin folds on his limbs and face and most certainly under layers of off-white clothes and apron smeared with blood. James can see his eyes even from this distance. All watery and grey-blue. Jeremy had once pulled the skin under his eyes down so pink of the undersides of his eyes showed and his irises and pupils drunkenly swam upwards so his face looked like melting candle wax.

This is exactly how this one looked like. Fat, piggish cheeks hanging like pumpkin sides and fish-like mouth stupidly open.

_Wakes up in the morning, half past five  
Chops from sunrise to sunset  
I don't see how he stays alive  
Meat's gonna be the death of ole Pete yet_

He didn’t look the least bit stupid when he started running.

James isn’t a sexist, but there is something about hive panic that only has female members of the group screaming.

No time to dwell on gender reaction differences. This giant might waddle in a ridiculous excuse for running, but he is horrifically fast thanks to his mass. Everything shakes and the speakers shake and buzz with every step.

In a moment of split-second decision, James grabs the other two and runs forward, towards the approaching thing ignoring Richard’s screams of trepidation and confusion before throwing them both into the next aisle on the left. Thankfully, his plan worked.

Heavy weight on stumpy feet thundered past them towards the, by the sound of it, a scattering mass.

As James keeps pushing them on, the stubbornly same-patterned music isn’t loud enough to drown screaming, metal hitting metal and something softer, squishier, more horrid-sounding, and horrible voluminous animal-like grunting.

The maze is endless and ever the same. James thinks that’s one of the reasons he doesn’t remember losing Richard. It was at one point they were together, and in the other, it’s just him.

He remembers when they lost Jeremy very well, however.

Jeremy.

Fucking stepped on like a cockroach.

Squashed so the dark red and pinkish insides splattered from under the giant foot in all directions like a ketchup bottle being run over by a tire, bones crunching and breaking.

James is unsure which sound he produced upon seeing that. He was probably overshadowed by Richard’s high-pitched screaming James thought impossible for his throat to produce. Having to invest a lot of slacken leftover energy to draw him away running.

Then he’s alone for a while, nerves cracking from parroting, looping, maddening, _mocking_ music.

_Brought ole Pete back to town  
To electrocute him there  
But Pete was crazy like a clown  
He chopped down that electric chair_

He runs into other people rounding corners. Too shocked to ask questions, too shocked to humanly react and join forces so they just pass each other like ants at work. But it’s never Richard. Fear for his own life as well as finding his friend’s mauled body in each next corridor is driving James faster and faster on his feet, glad the music is covering loud, frantic breathing.

Until he finally sees him at the end of the long stretch, on the other side. James is blinking the blurriness of stress and exhaustion until finally, _finally_ it comes clear. It’s Richard. Really is.

In a single, beautiful second, Richard grins, ready to open his mouth, maybe to call out James’ name.

He is snatched from behind so fast the transition from the ground to the high point in the air is missed, nonexistent. Richard’s panicked yells ricochet off steel walls, interfere with the music. One giant, meaty hand lifts his wriggling form, high in the air, above the sagging-face. A mouth opens wider than James thought possible on such a compressed face.

Richard’s yells turn to screaming James could only run from before. He can’t run now. His legs are stone as he watches the giant’s mouth enclose around Richard’s left thigh and bite in, through, off. Red liquid is splattering the fat-patched face as it chews, bones crunching in the wide jaw, flesh protruding from between crooked teeth, shooting shivers down James’ back with every clamp.

Screaming and crying his head off, Richard still struggles. He is scratching against huge fingers of the fist and flailing one remaining leg, bobbing his head forward repeatedly in agony and spilling saliva.

Once he’s swallowed, the butcher shoves the profusely bleeding, buckling Richard into a huge pouch hanging off his hip James hadn’t noticed until now. Richard’s screaming becomes muffled and music completely drowns him out, and his very existence.

James runs for his life, now definitely hearing the noises he’s producing, feeling these tears he’s shedding, even as he’s been convinced he has no liquid inside him left.

_He’s hackin’ and wackin’ and smackin’_

James is stumbling down the corridors for hours. Days. He is running into fewer and fewer people until eventually he feels so alone that he is in some sort of trance. He doesn’t plan the next turn. He knows that if he falters and stops, he will fall over and never give up again.

_He’s hackin’ and wackin’ and smackin’_

Whenever he hears thundering steps approaching and the heavy, compressed breathing, sounding like it’s coming through a pipe, he’d duck low, press against the wall. He’d somehow managed to dodge the thing’s eye three times.

Eventually, he stops believing things are real. The same, circling corridors, the mind-drilling looping song, the thundering steps, coming closer and drifting farther away. The pain in his muscles turns into nothing and he doesn’t feel anything anymore. His arms, his legs, his head, his heart. Everything becomes one, same biomass shivering in nonexistence.

Until something is different when he rounds one corner.

James lifts his nonexistent eyes, straightens his nonexistent back.

The longer corridor has an end. But it isn’t a dead-end or another wall.

It’s a translucent barrier. Like glass.

The mere break in the monotony of madness has James stumble-run forward, music a Doppler effect in his ear, pouring in and out as he moves down it, the barrier coming closer.

He reaches it, out of breath, out of mind, knees shaking, feeling on the verge of death, holding just onto firm belief he’s found hope. Maybe even a way out.

He hops on an elevation and presses his hands against the glass.

His heart sinks.

A mockery of a grand hall with round clothed tables sitting on a huge red carpet and vast chandeliers hanging from above, stretching outwards like a hangar. Doesn’t get any more aristocratic, posher, more noble and gallant.

And yet the things that occupy the chairs are so far from any of those attributes. Each different from the other, groups and piles of morbidly obese giants situated on chairs which look nigh from snapping under their brute weight, grabbing at raw delicacies with their hands and shoving them in their mouths. Blood and flesh gushing out of their wide, gluttonous maws, long, thin, thick, firm, fragile bones scattered all across the tables and the carpet. But the hands just keep grabbing. And the new piles of meat keep arriving. So, disgustingly familiar meat. Limbs. Insides.

A grand feast at its prime, undignified and utterly, utterly revolting.

Pigs for slaughter.

To a fly, a canary is a monster. To a canary, it’s the cat.

_He just hacks_

James thinks he should do something with himself. Wheeze or cry, make some reaction. But he forgets how they are made.

_Wacks_

Laboured pipe-like breathing from behind him. James sees a reflection of something giant and white calmly loom above him, but he can’t quite unclasp his attention from this grand, spectacularly morbid scene.

_Choppin’ that meat_

A movement in the reflection and suddenly there is sharp, shrieking pain in the middle of his head, traveling through it, down his throat, past his shoulders and abdomen as his vision splits impossibly before going completely black, swiped away with the pain.

* * *

James jerks awake and he must’ve made a loud noise because he sees Jeremy on a mat just here to his right, head lifted suddenly off the ground. Jeremy. Alive, moving and in whole piece. Not squashed to mush.

“Bugger, James”, mumbles Jeremy, voice croak and unprepared followed by a deep inhale as his brain demanded oxygen it freely receives in fresh night air and Jeremy stretches his arms, producing a symphony of cracks.

James stares. Doesn’t understand. He’s spent days locked up in a metal cage with dozens of other people getting dehydrated and pissing himself in fear, and then even more days in a steel maze. He’s seen Jeremy getting stepped on and Richard being eaten. He’s heard the laboured pipe-like breathing and inhumane grunts. He’s smelt fresh blood and rotting meat. He’s seen the giant fat bastard chasing after him on his clumsy, stumpy feet, wielding that damn cleaver knife. How… how can this be possible?

James feels sick climbing up his throat and he makes a low whine as he bends his upper body over and tries to remember how to breathe. His throat is closing and his temples go numb from gritting his teeth so bad.

“May?”

James suddenly feels like there is too much and too little air in him at the same time and he is trying to force it in and out of himself in firm bursts through his nose, leaning with his palms against the ground. The only thing he succeeds is hyperventilating and when the suffocating wheezing starts, hysterical and high-pitched, Jeremy’s mind and body are entirely awake.

“James? James. Are you alright?” He already drags himself up on his hands and knees, barely paying attention to the barking pain as he does so and hurriedly crawls over to his friend’s side. He notices how hard James is shaking and how glassed over his wide eyes are — Jeremy feels all traces of cool slipping out of his grasp.

“Shh, shh, shh”, he gently shushes, not waiting for a permit before wrapping his arms around the distressed man and pulling him close, resuming with soft shushing noises. Cameras and mics aren’t on them. It’s a still night around the campfire and they are out of sight on a separate clearing.

James doesn’t push him away and it frightens Jeremy even more. “It’s alright, James. It will be alright, you hear me? Are you hurting anywhere? Can you breathe?”

A grunt is all he gets in response before wheezing continues, panicked and unbearably loud. Jeremy gathers James even closer to himself, helplessly looking around, simultaneously fearing that if James managed to attract bigger audience, they would somehow make it worse with their presence.

“It’s alright, shhh, listen to the crickets, just listen to the crickets, James. Listen to them.”

“What’s wrong?” asks Richard crawling over from his tent he chose to sleep in, obviously woken by the commotion.

“Don’t know.” The way Jeremy says it is more head shake than a whisper and he continues to hold James, rocking him slightly. “He’s completely freaking out.”

“You’re shaking”, notes Richard with sympathy that doesn’t suit him and shifts so that he’s on the other side of James, squeezing his shoulder with one hand and patting his arm with the other, trying for calming.

“Y-your leg”, James manages. _Too, too real._

“Eh?” Richard is confused, but at James’ horrified look complies. “My leg is fine, look.”

He extends his leg.

“T-the other one”, James gasps, pointing shakily. He’s vibrating like old Nokia and Jeremy is trying not to panic himself, squeezing him tighter to stop him from shivering away.

“Oh.”

Richard offers his left leg, even rolls the trouser leg up to reveal the skin, unsure if the still protruding scar over the knee will provoke chaotic reaction.

It doesn’t. Moreso, James’ eyes seem to shrink in magnitude a little and Richard offers a small encouraging smile.

“Mostly fine”, mumbles Jeremy into top of James’ head. “Shhhh, just listen to the crickets, James. Listen to them talk. They have something to tell you.”

James does. And it works. Through several sessions of deep intakes of breath verbally navigated by Jeremy and Richard, James manages to force his body to stop shivering. Jeremy’s rocking reduces to light patting on James’ upper arm.

Twenty minutes and James is finally lulled into state of peace. He is growing heavier against Jeremy, eyes drooping down even as a small, still restless part of his brain continues to shoot them back open from fear of going back to that dreadful place.

But then Jeremy reaches for the back of his head and begins massaging a linear pattern through his locks, going from the backs of his ears with a thumb and other fingers and gathering them in the middle before spreading them back out. He is gently, but thoroughly repeating the motion until James is at last completely out of it, sound asleep and snoring softly.

Richard looks up at Jeremy with genuine fascination. “Where did you learn that?”

“Katya”, Jeremy smirks a little at the reminiscence. “She had night terrors for a period. Between nine and eleven years old. Learned that trick from an online article. You know how snoopy I am about those things. Well… it would always calm her down.”

Richard looks at the calm figure of their sleeping friend. Then eyes Jeremy. Worriedly. “What the bloody hell was that, Jezza?”

Jeremy looks down on the top of the head. “I don’t know. If it was just a nightmare… we’ve had them before, all three of us, and we all know it, but… we just brush them off, right? No way were they ever _that_ bad.”

“He asked about my leg”, thinks Richard, absentmindedly patting his left knee. “I don’t know, Jeremy. Whatever it was — wherever he was — I think it was more than horrible.”

“We can ask him in the morning”, Jeremy suggests, periodically slowly bringing the motions of his hand to a stop then making to easily dispose James to his sleeping spot. James’ grip tightens on Jeremy’s shirt once midst motion and Jeremy pauses, waiting for the grip to relent before carefully laying James the rest of the way across the resting mat.

James doesn’t wake up again and Jeremy — difficultly — goes back to sleep. Sounds of James hyperventilating, the sounds Jeremy has never heard in his life and doesn’t want to ever again, still traumatizing his ears.

But when they ask him about it in the morning, James doesn’t remember anything. Doesn’t remember what woke him up and doesn’t remember the whole campfire ordeal. Jeremy and Richard don’t push him and James appears very much his old, normal self, so they resume the filming.

But on in his life, when he hears one particular song, old song from Roy Brown, James gets unexpected chills all over himself and can never fight looking back over his shoulder.

He doesn’t like that song. Doesn’t know why or why it makes him feel that way. He just doesn't like it.

Maybe it's just the tune. It's quite catchy. Catchy things tend to be annoying.


	29. Edgar Allan Crow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a raven named Zoltan from Stephen King’s novel “The Gunslinger” whose only phrase is “Screw you and the horse you rode in on.”

For the past few months, every day, Jeremy would get a visitor on the window. He would come to accept it as a natural alarm clock. Even better than a normal one. It would seemingly always know when to come. It would usually be around eight in the morning, but even if the previous night had been wilder or otherwise occupying, it would seem to know when to time and would show up after ten just as they would begin to gently wake up.

A gorgeous-looking carrion crow with shiny feathers groomed and dark like ink, the shininess of round orbs the only differentiator of eyes against the rest of the body. It would gently tap against the glass with a graphite-grey beak in regular intervals, almost like careful, considerate knocking.

The first time it came, Lisa was the first to notice it. She is a lighter sleeper than Jeremy, so she pushed herself onto her elbows to search for the source of the noise and with a soft gasp shook Jeremy awake. Jeremy grumbles at her enthusiasm unhappily at first until he follows her pointed finger and whisper-shouting in the direction of the window.

They carefully approach it, expecting it to fly away with every step, but it doesn’t. Not even when they open it and Lisa carefully extends a finger towards it, fully expecting it to have a bloody hole drilled in them from the sharp beak. The animal is not only fearless, but amazingly docile and allows Lisa to pet it and shower her with cooing words.

Jeremy leaves her to it before briskly leaving the bedroom and coming back minutes later with pieces of banana which the bird gladly accepts. Even being so careful as to not injure his fingers.

Then something fascinating happens that brightens their morning even more.

The crow opens its beak and caws a very verbal phrase. “ _Tamadanagoj_ ”, which, after a week or so, Jeremy manages to break through.

“Tumble down a gorge.”

They can’t believe it the first time, though Jeremy has heard the facts how crows and their close relatives are all extraordinary imitators. The moment it does so, it spreads its wings and flies away.

It happens repeatedly each morning. The crow flies in, they pet it and feed it, it utters its phrase, which Jeremy just assumes is a form of greeting or thanks, and flies away.

Lisa thinks it’s adorable. She even names him Corvi. Jeremy pretends to be annoyed when, in reality, he becomes quite fond of this new peculiar guest. Since it isn’t alarmed by human presence and has obviously come to them on its own volition, along with an amazing ability of speech, Jeremy assumes it’s someone else’s pet, paying them visits to bribe for extra food.

As a birdwatching fanatic, Jeremy doesn’t mind.

A day before he’s about to depart for a day of shooting in Colorado with Richard and James, he is feeding it while Lisa is downstairs.

Once it’s finished, out of nowhere, the crow pecks him quite painfully on the index finger.

“Ow!” complains Jeremy, hissing and shaking his hand with mild curses. Odd. This hasn’t happened before.

The crow looks unimpressed. Even annoyed. Somewhat scolding. Before Jeremy can say anything, it briefly opens its beak,

“Prick.”

Then it flies away.

“Very odd”, mutters Jeremy, rubbing his finger.

The next day they fly over the Atlantic. Jeremy leaves with a short kiss to Lisa’s lips, jokingly telling her to mind their ‘guest’ while he is gone.

The three have a wonderful day and a resting night. On their second they, they are snailing up the narrow roads towards the National Park for a series of shoots. Everything is quiet as they drive upwards, which will be included in epic scenery scenes, filmed from above by drones.

Then James whistles a recognizable descending melody, which the other two cars capture through comm. Jeremy’s mouth curls into a smile as the whistling is followed by singing in a heavy American accent.

“ _Someeeee people say a man is made outta mud. A poor man’s made out of muscle and blood._ ”

Richard joins in in a unison duet. “ _Muscle and blood and skin and bones, a mind that’s a weak and a back that’s strong_.”

Jeremy, lastly, with his impeccable southern accent:

“ _You load sixteen tons, what do you get?  
Another day older and deeper in debt  
Saint Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go  
I owe my soul to the company store_”

A soft sound vibrates through Jeremy’s car, like a cough. The other two keep the song up, but he is pressing knobs and checking the blinking inside lights. Everything seems to be alright.

“ _IIIIIII was born one mornin’ when the sun didn’t shine  
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine_”

There’s another rumble, then pop and Jeremy feels it through his legs and back. He tries to keep the focus on the curvy road while checking the gear stick, the handbrake, the clutch pedal. One of the other two is snapping his fingers. Perhaps both of them are.

“ _I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal,  
And the straw boss said well-a bless my soul_”

**Boom**

The car swerves sideways immediately and Jeremy furiously scrambles his hands on the wheel, turning it the other way, but to no effect. He feels scraping vibration of a flat tire against the road as the front of the massive car slams through the fence until suddenly the ground isn’t there anymore. It’s happening so fast that it isn’t allowing a second to pass by.

Jeremy will never know Richard hit the brakes so hard that James rammed into him because he started turning, bashing against dry rocks down the side of the drop. The world is spinning too fast and the blue of the sky shifting acts with the much less pleasant ground at an unperceivable pace. 

When the car reaches the bottom of the slope, it flings off the side like it’s been flung off the slide in a children’s park. Then it’s falling, spinning comically slow in contrast to previous hysterics.

Until it reaches the deepest depths of the canyon, bounces off a protruding rock and finally hits the ground with a mushroom of fire and explosion.

Andy is the one to tell Lisa the news through tears. Richard is crying and shrieking too hard. James is silent in mind-stopping shock.

There are a lot of blurs in the days that follow.

One of them is that the crow never returned since that day.


	30. Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On 19th of this month the roof to my home caught fire around 1:15 in the night. Words cannot describe the terror I felt when I got a call from my mom the next morning and was told in detail what happened. If the downstairs neighbors hadn’t come ringing on their door the entire floor would’ve burned out and they as well. Thank God everybody was alright. It’s even more ironic that it happened the day after a national holiday and the first thing that caught fire was the flag. 
> 
> I flipped everything I was doing and after sitting there in disbelief for half an hour went to write this down. I know this chapter probably doesn’t go in step with the rest of them, but at that moment, to me, it was the most terrifying one.
> 
> All the prompt names were written in advance on 28th of October, and I initially had no clue at all what to do with this chapter. This isn’t how I wanted to find the idea for it...

Many debates surround the topic of the most powerful thing in the universe. Gravitational pull, electrostatic, dark matter, neutron stars…

James doesn’t give a fuck about any of those.

The most powerful, ravenous thing in existence is right there in front of him, glimmering against his eyes and thin paths of wetness stroked down his cheeks. Terrible and powerful as the dawn. Avaricious and lunatic in its destructive purpose. Even the smallest, most miserable amount latches on to the next eatable thing like a tick and from there on the only thing it can joyfully do is crawl and broaden and turn from pathetic to planetary terrifying. Taking. Only taking. Spreading unbearable heat even all the way here where James stands still in pajamas, barefoot in the wet grass.

Every now and then James blinks more moisture out of his eyes, what bitten by the heat, what irritated surging from another thing that has nothing to do with outside factors. He blinks in hopes the horrid sight would somehow disappear. The unbearable heat would retract with it, and all would come together to be well again as it should be like a clock being winded up backwards.

But trivial things as blinks have no power to change the horrible sight. Each visible opening of the castle burning with orange glow and exhaling black smoke made lighter in the dark night. Glass broken and shattered in million blinking pieces on the ground.

It doesn’t matter how rich you are, how big of a house you have, how many cars you own. Fire doesn’t care, as long as it is devourable.

_“HAMMOND!!”_

James turns his head.

Jeremy launches himself into a run to tear across the grass, but two firefighters grab him back. Their efforts are almost futile and it takes four of them to hold him back because the look of terror in Jeremy’s eyes only just beats the power of his body inertia at the sight of the huge home getting swallowed in flames. Like a bull against a matador, Jeremy insistently struggles, probably just as unconsciously, yelling words that exist and those that don’t.

Several uniformed men are running from out the back, supporting bodies of distressed people deviating from uniforms with pajamas and dressing gowns. Mindy. Izzy. Willow. The last one clutching Captain the Jack Russell and crying her eyes out as tears carve traces of purity on her soot and dirt-covered twisted face.

No Richard.

James doesn’t remember if he checked on them. He only remembers insistently boring at the main door with unblinking gaze that poured liquid.

The girls are being checked on and are tried to be talked to. Inferno gives their shocked, sullen faces orange glow. Gluttonous and wrathful in its enormity.

The dog is howling in Willow’s arms. James sees no other but him.

He is looking at the door and trying not to jump when one side of the brick roof collapses and implodes. It elicits a duet of shrieks from Mindy and Willow while Izzy is in much the same state as James.

Then sudden shift.

The front door bursts open and breathes fire, mouth of a dragon. James does jump then, watching three or four firefighters jump out, their yells deafened by roaring fire. One of them is holding a middle-sized dog.

Two more are dragging an unconscious, limp body between them.

James releases the grip on his lungs and starts breathing again, trying not to fold and fall onto the grass.

The ambulance is already sitting there, wailing firetrucks in position to shoot blasts of pressured water onto the structure falling to pieces.

The final group of firefighters reaches them. Richard’s body completely limp between them, not looking much alive. He is nearly thrown into the back of the ambulance and James can see the red patches of gnawed skin, missing hair, and half-devoured clothes. 

Mindy and her daughters are forced into another vehicle as they are speeding off, but Jeremy manages to untangle himself from the uniforms and stuff himself into the back of an ambulance, gripping the edge of the stretcher until his fingers are white, lips pressed firmly together as his eyes survey Richard’s unconscious form. He is quiet as a mouse now, like a child dropping a tantrum because it’s gotten what it wanted.

James only manages to see the poetic difference in manic movements of the paramedics and statue-like stillness of Jeremy before the back door is shut and the ambulance is driving away, sirens on and screaming.

James turns back around and watches as the thing that had started civilizations, the most glorified, most feared force in the universe, is torturously slowly being forced under control to attempt to be smothered out and vanquished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I could have just a moment more of your attention — I want to shout a huge thank you to Ymas who, despite being so busy during week days, has never failed to selflessly catch up with this crazy project over the weekends. What a supporter she is. Every writer should have one like that. Her name should be right there next to mine. Thank you so much, my friend. Doubt I’d reach the end if it wasn’t for your comment nudging. <3
> 
> Oh and be sure to check her comment fics, [Your Turn](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27493897) and [Safety](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27777421). For clarification, she is currently handling about five or six huge projects of her own. And yet she is still able to produce this gorgeous pair of fics. What an honor and joy they are to read. Thank you again. <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * A [Restricted Work] by [Ymas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ymas/pseuds/Ymas) Log in to view. 
  * A [Restricted Work] by [Ymas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ymas/pseuds/Ymas) Log in to view. 
  * A [Restricted Work] by [Ymas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ymas/pseuds/Ymas) Log in to view. 




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